clients - GPWA Times

LETTER FROM
THE DIRECTOR
W
elcome to Number 13! It’s one of our
biggest issues ever, with in-depth
coverage and expert commentary on a broad
spectrum of industry-related developments.
In our cover story, Dan Fleyshman of Victory
Poker speaks candidly with Aaron Todd about
the new site. He tells Aaron that he’s not
expecting VP to become the next Full Tilt or
PokerStars, but it’s hard to believe that he’ll rest
until he actually makes that happen. By the
way, whatever you do when you’re in Las Vegas,
make sure you never accept an invitation from
Blitz Bilzerian to drop by his condo for a visit.
GPWA
Executive Director: Michael Corfman
Marketing Director: Andrea Mullaney
Program Manager: Steven Corfman
Program Coordinator: Nancy Troy
GPWA Times Magazine
Managing Editor: Vin Narayanan
Senior Editor:
Aaron Todd
Associate Editor:
Dan Igo
Copy Chief: Bill Riley
Designer: George Choi
Advertising
To advertise in the
GPWA Times, please e-mail: [email protected]
Subscriptions
To subscribe to the
GPWA Times, visit
gpwa.org/magazine.
It’s FREE!
Speaking of poker, Jeremy Enke has a thing
or two to share with us about the importance
of not taking shortcuts when creating a poker
forum. Players, he tells us, are quite adept at
distinguishing between a forum with useful,
original content and one that looks like a runof-the-mill banner farm. Do it right, and your
patience and hard work will pay off.
Other stories you’ll want to read include
Gary Trask’s look at the current state of
Online Bingo and his discussion with Matija
Vorgic and Dean Leyland on how to promote
the World Cup, Adam van Vlaardingen’s
suggestions for building player trust and
brand recognition through social networking,
the eye-opening prognostications of four
industry heavyweights, Vin Narayanan’s report
on changes in gaming legislation in France
and the U.K., some very good affiliate and
affiliate manager interviews, a major addition
to the Wall of Shame and our photo gallery
featuring highlights of the GPWA’s recent trips
to Australia and Holland for a couple of very
good conferences.
This issue will be distributed to all attendees
of the iGaming Super Show in Prague at the
end of May. We’ll be there, and we’re looking
forward to seeing you there too!
Finally, a reminder: if you’re not receiving the
GPWA Times in the mail, stop whatever you’re
doing, visit gpwa.org/magazine and start your
free subscription now. You’ll be glad you did.
Sincerely,
Michael A. Corfman
GPWA Executive Director
ISSN 1941-9872
Table of Contents
8
Social Networking and the iGaming
Landscape
Social networking has hit the iGaming world, and
Adam van Vlaardingen wants you to recognize
and reap the rewards.
12
Out and About in
Australia and Amsterdam
20
The GPWA Times Magazine World
Cup Round Table
38
Cover Story: The Face of Things to
Come
Cameras clicked overtime to bring us excellent
images from iGB Down Under and CAC
Amsterdam.
Gary Trask picks up some good marketing ideas
from two online sports-betting experts.
Aaron Todd takes us along as Dan Fleyshman
gives him an exclusive tour of the newly launched
Victory Poker.
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE
18
Building a Sucessful Online Poker
Community
24
Online Bingo – What a Difference
a Year Makes
26
Gazing into the Crystal Ball
70
France and the U.K Take a Second
Look at Their
Gambling Laws
DEPARTMENTS
6
7
22
48
52
60
62
By the Numbers
Cartoon Caption Contest
Event Calendar
GPWA Sponsors
Affiliate Interview Series
APCW’s Wall of Shame
Affiliate Manager Interviews
BY THE NUMBERS
€18.7 billion
The amount of regulated
e-gaming and betting
activities in Italy, according to
eGaming Review.
€242,000
32,000
The number of jobs that
would be created if the
United States legalized
online gambling, according
to a study by H2 Gambling
Capital.
The amount of money four
armed robbers reportedly
stole from an EPT event in
Berlin.
$543 million
$200 million
The amount in fines Daniel
Tzvetkoff faces after being
arrested for processing
online gambling transactions
for Americans through his
payment processor Intabill.
The tax revenue that could
be generated in Florida
by legalizing online poker,
according to State Rep.
Joseph Abruzzo
(D-Wellington).
53
The age of EOG.com owner
Kenneth Weitzner, who
reportedly committed suicide
in Virginia in April.
$8.4 million
The amount Everest Poker
was supposed to pay the
World Series of Poker for
being the tournament’s
sponsor in 2010. Everest
is suing Harrah’s, claiming
a breach of contract when
WSOP broadcasts in France
displayed Full Tilt Poker
logos on the tables.
290,000
The number of players that
the Entraction online poker
network gets access to after
reaching an agreement with
Betsson.
By the Numbers
$75 million
The amount of money Tiger
Woods was offered by Paddy
Power in a sponsorship deal.
He declined.
12%
The percentage of American
adults who visited an online
casino in 2009, according to
the same report.
8
The number of teams in the
20-team English Premier
League sponsored by online
gambling companies.
The amount of a sponsorship
deal that A. C. Milan signed
with Dubai’s Emirates
Airlines. It was previously
sponsored by bwin.
$1.4 billion
The estimated annual
revenue of PokerStars,
according to an article on
Forbes.com.
30%
The percentage of American
adults who visited a landbased casino in 2009,
according to a report from
Mintel.
€60 million
$223,420
$500,000
The amount Annie Duke
won by claiming the
National Heads-Up Poker
Championship in March.
€33.4 million
The amount Playtech paid
to acquire Virtue Fusion,
with an additional payment
of €8.1 million dependent
on performance in the first
quarter of 2011.
The amount won on a
progressive slot machine at
Win A Day Casino, its largest
win ever.
€1,000
The personal bounty offered
by Bodog Poker Network
CEO Patrik Selin to whoever
knocked him out of the EPT
Grand Final in Monaco.
250 million
The milestone poker hand
Sky Poker is expected to
reach in the near future.
Caption Contest
One of the nice things about playing
blackjack online is when you lose,
there isn’t an audience (you hope)
to watch you go down in defeat. But
when you’re in a live casino, not
only are there people watching you
lose money, but you also have to
watch others win. And that’s exactly
the situation our affiliate finds
himself in here. What’s he thinking?
What’s his fellow player thinking?
That’s for you to decide!
Go to the forums at gpwa.org
and submit your caption for this
cartoon. We’ll take a look at all the
entries and pick the one we think
is the funniest. The winner will
be announced in our next issue
and will receive a free copy of the
iGaming Business Directory.
Last issue’s cartoon
Drawings by Ben Riley, www.ben-riley.com
The Winner is . . .
“You better be booking a cruise because this is NOT how I
expected us to spend our wedding anniversary!” – my3sons
Congratulations to “my3sons,” who wins a free iGaming Business Directory.
And the runners up . . .
In our last issue, we asked for a
caption for the cartoon pictured
above, where an affiliate is in a
room with his computer out while
everyone else is watching England
outplay the United States in the
World Cup.
“OK. So that’s englandvsusaworldcupliveinplay.com bought. Just gotta knock
up a site before the game finishes and I
reckon that’s a nice little niche” – TheBoyMitchell
“There go Chips and Pompy fighting over
whether it is called football or soccer
again!” – Chips
“Hmmmm, if 24 players each deposit
$500 and my rev share is 30%...woo hoo...
GREAT GAME!!!” – casinobonusrus
“Does he have to place his sports bet
online now?! He may win on this game,
but the odds of him winning tonight are
growing very slim!” – ladypress
“Never again. I thought these GPWA
people partied. Next time my date shows
up with a laptop he’s getting kicked in his
processor!” – UltimatePokerBonus
“Didn’t you bet on a 10-0 victory for the
USA?” – cat
Caption Contest
Social networking
and the iGaming landscape
By Adam van Vlaardingen
Social networking is no longer just a preteen phenomenon for updating each other’s current favorite MTV music videos;
it’s part of our daily lives. Social networking has also hit the iGaming world, and
the iGaming market stands to reap the
rewards of this largely untapped, effective
communication vehicle. Yet, even with so
much hype surrounding the term “social
media,” there remain large contingents of
operators and affiliates who are reluctant
to embrace the medium.
Out with the old
and in with the new
There are several reasons to operate online social networks as a principal source
of communication.
By transforming consumers into contentproducers, operators and affiliates alike
are able to leverage organic content and
develop brand awareness on a mass scale.
By developing a feedback loop, not only
are you encouraging opinion sharing, but
you are increasing the dialogue surrounding your brand. Promoting discussion and
getting consumers involved will help build
trust and recognition of your brand.
Social networking not only extends your
reach, it also has an advantage in potential
immediacy of impact. An operator or affiliate looking for feedback on a potential
idea will receive information significantly
faster through social networking mediums than through more traditional forms
of communication such as e-mail.
Social networking is a long-term project
with long-term impact. Involvement in
social media has a tremendous upside,
Social Networking and the iGaming Landscape
but requires a significant investment of
numerous resources to effectively and efficiently implement. This investment of
resources is what will truly impact your
desired results, and the reality is that
these efforts are meant to be shared.
The development of a following requires
the involvement of a group of people. In
order to inject personality, promote discussion and receive feedback, a group of
participants needs to manage the dialogue
and offer more personal responses. This
long-term commitment will be a major
factor in producing long-term results.
What Have We Learned?
We are always learning new things about
social networking as the medium is still
growing in scope and scale. It is not an
exact science, and that is what makes it
so attractive to affiliates and operators
who want to expand their communication scope. What we have learned so far is
that social networking has a tremendous
impact that is far-reaching. Depending on
which form of social networking is being
used, it can be effectively implemented as
a variety of tools.
Acquisition Tool
For operators searching for new affiliates,
or affiliates seeking new players, vehicles
like Twitter and Facebook can be excellent ways to acquire additional business.
Effectively utilizing these mediums lets
you avoid the “salesy” approach and allows you to focus on the appropriate targets for your message. You can develop
a Facebook Fan Page for your brand and
promote offerings through it to gain access to a pool of individuals who prefer
this medium, or you can Tweet the latest
promotion and gain the attention of users
on-the-go through the mobile interface of
Twitter.
Retention Tool
By developing a personal dialogue, operators and affiliates are able to increase
rapport with their target markets. This in
turn leads to an increase in trust, which
ultimately leads to retention. But retention requires consistent care and attention. Just like a relationship with a friend,
social networking creates a bond that requires regular communication in order to
retain strong ties among operator, affiliate
and player. In this vein, it is important to
remain consistent in your communication, responding in a timely manner to encourage a flow of dialogue and to sustain
interest.
CRM Tool
By openly encouraging feedback, you will
undoubtedly encounter some negative
criticism. The important thing to remember is that if people are willing to bring
up something negative, they are actively
thinking of your brand and are looking
for a solution. By monitoring this feedback, responding with immediacy and
addressing the issue, you are actively supporting your customers and developing
your relationship with them. Eliminating
the “cookie cutter” response and adding a
personal touch is simply one way to regain
the trust of customers that may have been
lost due to something entirely avoidable.
Although it may seem daunting at first,
your involvement with social media will
help support your marketing efforts while
opening up new opportunities that are
presented through the use of these media. According to a Pew Research Center
survey of individuals 18 years or older, al-
most half (46 percent) said they get their
news from four to six news platforms each
day. Mainstream conventional media are
declining in effectiveness and this has led
to an upsurge in communicating directly
with the end-user. Through the development of this relationship, the potential to
gain valuable insight into feelings about
and opinions of your products and brands
is vast. It really doesn’t get any better than
this—being able to obtain a mountain of
feedback and potential ideas by simply
paying attention to your consumers and
addressing their concerns with genuine
reactions.
Brand management tool
Ultimately, by working on your relationships and being supportive, you are increasing the perceived value of your brand.
Interconnectivity is a driving force behind
social networking and it all leads to brand
management.
The results of such efforts will be longlasting; however, they may appear to be
intangible at first. The gambling space is a
saturated market. By effectively using the
aforementioned tools, your relationship
management and customer retention will
be strong enough to withstand the flashy
attractiveness of a rival skyscraper banner
or sign-up bonus.
Another major lesson is that different
forms of social media have different functions, and thus can be utilized in different
ways to efficiently leverage their related
strengths while minimizing the impact of
their weaknesses.
Take for example the Twitter vs. Facebook
conundrum. Where Twitter excels in its
immediacy, convenience and targeting, it
is lacking in that it must deliver anything
meaningful in no more than 140 characters. It has the valuable ability to help
direct your target market to a specific
landing page, but lacks the scale of a character-unrestricted post. To use it effectively, you have to follow the right people,
have the right people follow you, and be
able to optimize 140 characters to get your
point across in a message that is interesting and relevant to your audience.
Facebook, on the other hand, delivers a
wealth of users (a major increase in scale
of communication), offers a more personal
form of communication and provides the
ability to host a discussion, create a fan
page and become Google-indexed. However, it has the potential to work against
you if your discussion takes a less-thandesirable route.
When managed correctly, an open discussion can have a wealth of potential. By
encouraging dialogue and building receptiveness, you are fundamentally building
confidence in your brand. Your affiliate
marketing software should offer tracking
and monitoring abilities to examine stats,
which will help you gain insight into your
target market’s opinions and their receptiveness. Any perceived success must be
measured in order to prove the worth of
your investment, and such statistics can
be invaluable in helping you determine
the future course of your involvement.
For example, when your software can
track the performance of a social media
campaign, the benefits are that you are
able to determine the relative success of
different campaigns, while comparing effectiveness of certain keywords and verifying the click-through rates as well as a
variety of useful stats. By running concurrent campaigns, being able to tweak them
on-the-go and ultimately having the abili-
Social Networking and the iGaming Landscape
10
ty to determine which are more successful,
the potential not only to learn more about
your target markets, but also to effectively
communicate with them, is what will help
propel you to social media success.
Keys to Success
Have a strategy
Involvement in social networking is a
two-way street. It requires a regularity of
communication and investment, while focusing on a defined, attainable goal. Determining how your objectives will alter
your relationships with your customers is
vital to your strategy. If your business goal
is to gain x amount of new business during the year, and you have aligned your
social media goal with it, then you must
have a strategy in place to carry out the
necessary tasks. Through a combination
of social networking vehicles, your communication will be offered to the digital
world. If there is no strategy behind it,
then monitoring its performance serves
no purpose.
Understand the process
Like any undertaking, there is a process
by which relative success is measured.
Realizing a large financial impact after
the first three months of investment is
improbable. The initial investment of
time, people and funds is followed by several stages before any kind of financial
impact can be determined. Once action
is taken, and a reaction is established,
a non-financial impact will occur. This
impact will be the tipping point for the
subsequent stage: the financial impact.
Non-financial impact includes a number
of things such as increased brand perception, increased Web site visitors and blog
and forum comments. These will all affect
your ROI in the long-run, as you increase
your conversion rate by using the various
aforementioned tools.
Immerse yourself
In key channels
It is useful to maximize your involvement
in several forms of social media in order
Social Networking and the iGaming Landscape
to fully realize the strengths that each has
to offer. By utilizing these effectively, you
will gain diverse levels of feedback, as
various markets experience social media
in different ways. By involving yourself
in key channels you will remain fresh in
your target markets’ minds, and this will
increase your brand recognition.
Align social media goals
with business goals
Review your business goals and expectations, and take the opportunity to align
your social media agenda and goals to
support your bottom line. This multi-faceted approach toward a shared objective
is a great way to remain focused and on
course. Social media vehicles can easily become distractions if topics sway off
course, so it is important to remember
what objectives have been set.
If there is one point to take away from
this, it is that social media are a fantastic
support vehicle for connecting and communicating with your audience. They offer the opportunity to build relationships
with end-users (players) and promoters
(affiliates) while developing a personality associated with your program (operators). It is important to remember that
social media are a very effective vehicle
and are best suited to be accompanied
by other marketing efforts. Standing
alone, they can be a powerful marketing
tool, but to be utilized most effectively, a
multi-platform approach is usually best.
With a variety of marketing efforts supporting one another – consistency, focus
and social networking – the potential for
success is greatly improved.
“For operators searching
for new affiliates, or
affiliates seeking to
garner new players,
vehicles like Twitter
and Facebook can be
excellent ways to acquire
additional business.”
Adam van Vlaardingen
Adam is an affiliate manager at Income Access.
He has an interest in mobile marketing, social
networking and the future of the affiliate marketing industry. He resides and works in Montreal.
Out and About in
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13
Corfman (left)
The GPWA’s Steven
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enjoys a drink with
some friends in Austr
alia.
Schalk van der Sa
ndt from Canbet
(right) and Rudi
from Rewards Affili
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up
for the camera.
(cour tesy of Kiera
Goymour)
Hilar y Stovall (Slot
land Affiliates) an
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enjoying a drink
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The GPWA’s
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the Reward
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from Rewar
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while
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lounging in leather cha
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Shona, Helen
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Out and About in Australia and Amsterdam
Beacon show
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siness) som
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Bryan Bailey (Cas
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Out and About in Australia and Amsterdam
in this gro
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an, Casino
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18
Building a Successful
Online Poker Community
By Jeremy Enke
B
uilding a successful forum or online
community can be one of the most
challenging and difficult things for
an Internet marketer to accomplish. In
the poker affiliate market, it is even more
difficult due to the number of established
poker forums that are already successful.
As Internet marketers continue to go social, community building remains a hot
topic. In this article I hope to share some
tips and advice on the best way to launch
a successful poker community.
With any forum or community,
first impressions are critical. I
strongly suggest investing some
money in a good platform and
launching with a nice design.
When deciding to build a forum,
you have several software options
to choose from. The five most
popular forum software platforms currently on the market
are vBulletin, phpBB, YaBB, IVB
and SMF.
Many webmasters may disagree,
but in my opinion, for operating
a poker forum there is no better
software out there than vBulletin.
One tremendous benefit of going
with vBulletin is that many poker
players who post in forums are
already familiar with the interface. Many of the largest poker
forums in the world are already using this
platform. Launching with vBulletin will
undoubtedly increase your sign-ups and
activity among new members.
Although a vBulletin license can cost you
a couple hundred dollars per forum, it is
worth every penny. Unlike much of the
free forum software out there, vBulletin is
extremely secure as long as you maintain
your updates. Additionally, vBulletin has
hundreds of great plug-ins and add-ons
that will allow you to truly customize your
Building a Successful Online Poker Community
community. The interface for your members, moderators and administrators is
by far the most user-friendly platform on
the market.
Regardless of the forum software you
choose, as a poker affiliate you must realize that launching an online poker forum
will not create an immediate cash cow.
This is actually a very common misconception among many poker affiliates.
Sure, you are going to begin building a database of poker players, but you shouldn’t
expect to profit from these members until
“Regardless of the forum
software you choose, as a
poker affiliate you must
realize that launching an
online poker forum will
not create an immediate
cash cow.”
several months down the road. If there is
one golden rule you remember from this
article, it should be this: Poker players do
not sign up at forums with the intention
to click on your banners and make you
money; they sign up to become part of a
community where they can interact with
other poker players.
This is one of the fundamental mistakes
poker affiliates make when trying to start
or grow an online forum.
So how do you grow a forum or community within the online poker market? Below are a few pointers:
Stand out & be different – If your
poker forum is the same as the several
hundred others on the Internet, what
would really entice your traffic to sign
up and post? My suggestion would be to
focus on some sort of niche in the poker
affiliate market.
Seed content – Visitors are not going to
just show up and post of their own free
will. As the admin of the forum
you need to plant “seed content”
that is either very interesting or
even controversial. Give your
traffic and random Web surfers a
reason to sign up and post in your
community.
Rules & moderation – If you
are starting a forum, treat it like
a full-time job. Bring on great
moderators who can help create
seed content, reply to posts and
welcome new guests. Most importantly though, as you begin to
grow you have to make sure that
all spam is deleted in a timely
fashion. Even one spam post can
give a terrible first impression
and cause people to immediately
exit the site.
MOPFI – This is an old-school
sales principle, but it is very effective
when growing a forum. MOPFI stands for
Make Other People Feel Important. If you
are running the forums, practice MOPFI
on a regular basis with your members and
staff. When you recognize your members,
you will be amazed at how quickly they
develop loyalty to your community.
Start small & grow – Nothing is more
of a turnoff than arriving at a new poker
forum and seeing 50-odd forums and
flashing banners embedded there. Most
19
of the time these forums either have never
been posted in, or haven’t been posted in
for months. Start small and keep all your
members’ posts confined to a small area.
Motion creates emotion! When members
and visitors see activity in a few forums,
they will be much more likely to get involved. Having too many forums and
categories is extremely overwhelming for
new members. Keep it simple.
Another important aspect of running a
forum is that someone with a strong personality has to take on the leadership role.
Whether it is you, a moderator, or you and
a few moderators, somebody has to take
on the position of leadership and direction in the community. The leader or leaders need to be active and posting every
single day. Strong leadership and having
the leaders active are key ingredients for
growing a successful community.
Once you establish a leadership role with
your members, you can begin to monetize
the community. The way to monetize your
forum members is NOT simply getting
them to click on random links and banners. It is by engaging these members by
hosting tournaments, poker leagues and
special promotions. Another way to monetize your members is by offering some
sort of incentive such as rakeback, rake
races or a special deposit bonus.
There are two other important points
that are essential when building an online
community.
1. Compelling content is king – Initially when starting a forum, you have to
give people a reason to sign up and post.
Between you and your moderators, make
sure that the posts and content in your
forum are not the same old boring hand
histories. Also make sure that the forum is
always active. If that means you and your
moderators have to participate in conversations with each other all day, then by all
means do it. One thing I do not suggest,
however, is utilizing “pay per post” services to get your forum active. These services
seldom result in good content and will actually devalue your community.
itors and encourage them to leave through
your links, communities your goal is to
get your visitors to act and to spend time
on your site. Because of this, monetizing
poker affiliate forums is more difficult
than most would suspect. Think about the
online communities or social networks
you visit daily. You probably go there to be
social, read threads, send PMs and catch
up with others in the community, and not
to immediately click on affiliate links and
leave.
Think about this: When was the last time
you clicked an ad at Facebook, MySpace
or even your favorite forum? Probably
never. Poker affiliates must realize that
banners and text links are not the road to
riches when running a forum.
In order to profit with an online community, you have to be willing to think outside the box a little bit and leverage the relationships you have developed with your
members. Relationships are key when it
comes to converting these members to
profits. The bottom line is unless you are
willing to form relationships with hundreds of forum members, you will make
more money running an online portal that
ranks well in the search engines.
Gauging the success of an online community can be difficult, especially when
starting out. Just because your forum
isn’t profitable doesn’t necessarily mean
it isn’t successful. Building a successful
community is a marathon, not a sprint.
One way that I have always measured
success in online communities is when I
see members getting to personally know
other members. If your members are becoming friends, sharing PMs or speaking
offline, then you know you have created a
community that has loads of potential for
years to come.
Jermy Enke
Jeremy Enke is the CEO
of Poker Affliate Listings
(PokerAffiliateListings.com).
Jeremy has dedicated over
six years to the poker affiliate
market, with an overall mission
throughout this time of helping
affiliate marketers reach their
full potential and become more
successful in this terrific industry.
Jeremy has been involved in the
poker affiliate industry since
2003. Founding the world’s
largest poker affiliate community,
followed by the world’s largest
poker affiliate network, Jeremy
likes to refer to himself as a
self-proclaimed Certified Baller.
Jeremy’s sense of humor and
entrepreneurial spirit are second
to none.
Building a successful online poker community takes a lot of patience and hard
work. However, once you have accomplished this, the fruits of your labor and the
friendships you make can last throughout
your entire poker affiliate career.
2. Forum banner blindness – There
is a reason why many social networks and
online communities such as Facebook
have a hard time making a profit. Unlike
mini-sites where your goal is to attract vis-
Building a Successful Online Poker Community
20
The GPWA Times Magazine
World Cup Round Table
By Gary Trask
E
very four years, the World Cup
is one of the most anticipated
events on the planet, and this
year’s tournament will be no different. Beginning June 11, the quest for
32 nations to capture the coveted title
will begin and the world will be watching…literally.
In 2006, an estimated 715 million people
watched the final match between eventual champion Italy and runner-up France.
When that many people are paying attention to one single event it can mean
big business for those of us in the affiliate
marketing industry.
As we inch closer to the start of this year’s
World Cup in South Africa, the GPWA Times
sat down with two men who will have a vested interest in the popularity of the event.
Matija Vorgic – otherwise known as
“buyonaut” on the GPWA forums – is a
sports-betting affiliate who operates the
sites Bet2win.eu.com, Kladionicasport.com
and Freebets.uk.com. The 38-year-old is
based in Dubai and has worked in the affiliate marketing industry for the last four
years. The other member of our impromptu
“World Cup Round Table” is Dean Leyland,
the Senior Online Acquisitions Executive for
Totesport Affiliates in Wigan, U.K. The 25year-old Leyland is a six-year veteran of the
industry.
Both men agreed to speak with us regarding how their respective ends of the
business will use the World Cup to generate traffic, how their customers typically
wager on the event and what teams they
think will make some noise once the games
commence.
The GPWA Times Magazine World Cup Round Table
Here is how our conversation went:
As far as events that help generate new
customers and gross amount of wagers,
where does the World Cup stand?
Matija: The World Cup is the biggest
event in football, worldwide. Even people that usually don’t follow football get
engaged in the event, especially if their
country is taking part. Football-related
traffic increases by at least 50% percent
and perhaps more as the event is going
on. After experiencing Euro 2008, I’m
sure the World Cup will be excellent for
sports-betting affiliates.
Dean: This year’s World Cup is expected
to be THE biggest event in terms of customer acquisition and turnover we have
ever seen. Online betting has really come
of age since the last World Cup with companies more geared to accepting worldwide traffic for a worldwide event. For
21
Totesport the World Cup is the number
one event this year with Cheltenham a
close second. Obviously we have a close
affinity with Cheltenham. It is what Totesport has been all about since 1928. But we
are engaging more and more with other
sports. We are no longer just about racing
but football, golf and cricket, too.
How will you use the World Cup to
generate traffic?
Dean: We like to keep our cards close to
our chest on these matters, only telling affiliates and customers alike when we feel
the time is right. Obviously we will be giving affiliates enough time to add the content to their sites so there is no need to
worry on that front.
We can appreciate that. What about you,
Matija? Can you share with us how you’ll
promote the event?
Matija: I will create special sections dedicated to the World Cup. There will be a lot
of previews, statistics and forum posts.
CPC advertising helps a lot and I will use
that for at least two months – the month
before the event and during event.
How popular are the competition or
prize pool contests? Do they help you
convert smaller or more casual players
into more regular players?
Matija: Tipster competition with money
prizes is the core of my sites. It is a great converter tool and if you are fair to your players,
they tend to stick to your project. Competitions are very popular since they are fun,
tense and users can get some free cash.
Dean: I must admit, I am not a fan of
competitions to gain acquisition or assist
in conversions. They are more of a fun
diversion for users. Having managed the
partnership between one of England’s biggest Premier League football teams and
an online betting company I have been in
the position of relying on competitions to
drive acquisition and it just didn’t work in
that particular case. Season tickets, signed
shirts, even the chance to play at the
ground were popular competitions, but
did little in terms of generating traffic.
Do punters who don’t typically bet on At what point of the World Cup do you
football – or any other sports – decide get the most traffic?
to specifically bet on the World Cup? If
Dean: Immediately prior to the World
so, do these new players typically con- Cup commencing and just before England
vert into full-time players?
games. Being a U.K. company the bulk of
Matija: This is really a good question. I
would think that people that are not yet
betting online but are placing some bets
in local betting shops are likely to become
online players with good signup bonuses
during the Word Cup.
Do you agree, Dean?
Dean: Yes. Usually a customer whose
betting profile seems to be consistent with
horse racing betting, for example, will
have a small flutter on the World Cup.
Matija: Online betting still has a lot of
room to grow and from my experience
when your friends start to play online you
follow. It is as simple as that. I placed my
first online bet in 2000 and never walked
into another betting shop again.
Dean: Yes, it’s more of an interest thing.
They will be subjected to watching the
matches either at home or down the pub
so having a small bet helps keep interest.
Matija: Some people are still reluctant
to play online; it looks too complicated to
them – but with a new generation of players coming up that are tech savvy, it is the
fastest-growing online industry. We might
see some people that never used to bet become players, but those numbers could be
short term – during the event and never
again. On the other hand, there will be
people that will start their betting career
during the World Cup and continue to bet.
It is hard to say, but numbers of signups
and first-time deposits will increase.
What’s more popular: “To-win” bets
before the World Cup begins, or the
single-game betting?
Dean: Outright betting will be our most
popular market, by far.
our base is from the U.K. and so they have
a huge interest in the home team.
Matija: My best time will be at the very
start, when there are a lot of games and all
countries are still in the game.
Let’s move away from the business side
of things and talk to you both as fans.
How closely do you follow the sport and
who are your favorite teams?
Dean: I love the World Cup. Racing is
great and I enjoy playing golf regularly,
but nothing comes close to football, especially the World Cup. Obviously England is my team and I hope they do well
this year, but I have my doubts. Secretly
I follow Spain, too. Being a Liverpool fan,
their team of a few years ago consisted of
Reina, Arbeloa, Alonso, Torres and Reira
so I think deep down, most Liverpool fans
will be keeping an eye on how the Spanish
team does.
Matija: I follow the World Cup from
Game 1 all the way until the very end. My
favorite team is Croatia, but since they
are not going, I will support Netherlands,
Spain and England.
Before we let you go, can you pull
out your crystal ball and give us some
predictions?
Matija: I think Serbia could pull off very
good results; they have an excellent team.
And as always Germany, Brazil, Argentina
and Italy are to be looked after.
Dean: No surprise for my teams to beat
– Spain and Brazil. Brazil quietly went
about their business during qualifying,
swapping flair for grit and dynamism
whilst Spain has the best set of individual
players compared to any other team.
Matija: I also expect to see a lot of live
betting during this year’s World Cup.
The GPWA Times Magazine World Cup Round Table
22
2010 EVENT CALENDAR
May 2010
12-13 May
Global Interactive Gaming
Summit & Expo (GiGSE)
Palais des Congres
Montreal, Canada
gigse.com
25-28 May
iGaming Super Show
The Prague Fairground
Exhibition Centre
Prague, Czech Republic
igamingsupershow.com
For full details, visit gpwa.org/conferences
September 2010
1-2 September
9-11 January
Latin American iGaming
Congress (LAiG)
Uruguay
laigcongress.com
Affiliate Summit West 2010
Wynn Las Vegas
Las Vegas, Nevada
affiliatesummit.com
iGB España
Hotel Hesperia
Madrid, Spain
igbespana.com
25-27 January
October 2010
7-10 October
June 2010
8-9 June
5th Annual Online Bingo
Summit & Awards
London, England
bulletbusiness.com/bingo
14-15 June
EGR Live
Old Billingsgate
London, England
egrlive.com
July 2010
20-22 July
Sportsbetting & Lotteries Asia
Hong Kong
beaconevents.com
August 2010
15-17 August
Affiliate Summit East
Hilton New York
New York, New York USA
affiliatesummit.com
27-30 August
CBG Affiliate Weekend
Hilton Hotel and Suites
Niagara Falls, Canada
cbgaffiliateweekend.com
2010 Event Calendar
January 2011
Budapest Affiliate Conference
SYMA Centre
Budapest, Hungary
budapestaffiliateconference.com
19-21 October
European iGaming Congress &
Expo (EiG)
Bella Center
Copenhagen, Denmark
eigexpo.com
November 2010
12 November
Finance for Online Gambling
Grand Hotel
Stockholm, Sweden
i-gamingforum.com
16-18 November
April 2011
CAC Amsterdam
NH Grand Krasnapolsky
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
cac2011.com
International Gaming Expo (IGE)
Earls Court Exhibition Center
London, United Kingdom
ige-exhibition.com
27-29 January
The Betting Show
Earls Court Exhibition Center
London, United Kingdom
bettingshow.com
27-30 January
London Affiliate Conference (LAC)
London, United Kingdom
londonaffiliateconference.com
March 2011
Asian i-Gaming Congress &
Expo (AiG)
Sofitel Philippine Plaza
Manila, Philippines
aigcongress.com
iGB DownUnder
Star City
Sydney, Australia
igbaffiliate.com
Global Gaming Expo (G2E)
Las Vegas Convention Center
Las Vegas, Nevada USA
globalgamingexpo.com
Scandinavian Affiliate Super
Summit
Grand Hotel
Stockholm, Sweden
i-gamingforum.com
Clip & Save
24
Online Bingo –
What a difference a year makes
Has the bingo bubble burst, or is the best yet to come?
By Gary Trask
that Internet bingo was nearing the same popularity as online poker.
After seeing a surge in popularity and revenue for the better
part of the last five years, the
online bingo industry is suddenly at a crossroads.
But instead the bingo boom has
gone bust, to some extent. After seeing a 10 percent growth
in players month-to-month for
most of 2008 and the beginning of 2009, that number has
dropped to less than 1 percent
a month. The primary reason
for the flatlining growth is market saturation, but the problem
goes much deeper than that, according to Fraser.
“We’ve been very fortunate
as an industry,” admits Phil
Fraser, the founder of WhichBingo.com and WhichBingo.
co.uk. “But it now appears we
have our work cut out for us
if we want to continue to see
the kind of growth we have
become accustomed to.”
First off, there have been more
new transactions during the
last year that have helped the
“big get even bigger,” according to Fraser, a former online
casino manager at William Hill
who now owns Focus Online
Management, which runs the
WhichBingo sites as well as
Fraser is scheduled to be a keynote speaker at the 5th Annual
Online Bingo Summit in London June 8-9, where topics for
discussion include player saturation, consolidation and product innovation, all of which are
critical elements to the future
of online bingo.
“We are not yet at the point
where we’re desperate to survive,” Fraser explains. “There
is still money to be made and
we can all still make a profit.
But how much that profit will
end up being over the next few
years is in serious doubt.”
Phil Fraser, Focus Online Management
As little as 16 months ago, there didn’t
seem to be any doubt that the economic
opportunities for online bingo were endless. The number of online bingo sites in
the U.K. – the most prolific bingo market
in the world – went from 17 in 2004 to 238
in 2008 and the number of players in the
U.K. doubled between 2007 and 2008. H2
Online Bingo — What a Difference a Year Makes
Gambling Capital, a leading
supplier of data regarding the
gambling industry, reported
that global online bingo revenue in 2008 topped $1.5
billion and would reach $2.5
billion by 2012. Even Internet
powerhouse Google got into the
act, reporting in December of
2008 that Web research showed
?
25
FreeBingo.co.uk, BingoVIPClub.com, LiveFreeBingo.com and TopBingoSites.com.
isn’t so sure that it will lead to unmitigated success.
Last summer, PartyGaming purchased
Cashcade, which owns the Foxy Bingo
and Think Bingo sites, and in March
Harrah’s Interactive Entertainment entered the market by launching CAESARS
Bingo Online in the U.K. Earlier this year,
Paddy Power opened a bingo room and
created an online magazine dedicated to
bingo – believed to be the first of its kind
– called Bingo Power.
“I think what these affiliates are finding is that the grass isn’t always greener
on the other side,” says Fraser. “It’s one
thing to market bingo and generate traffic. But generating all of that traffic and
then being responsible for retention, restarts, registration and customer service
is a whole other set of problems.”
“As the big get bigger, the smaller sites
might not be able to compete,” Fraser
explains. “This is an open market, but
that isn’t something that’s going to allow
for a lot of growth. Then you have
companies that have never offered
bingo before, but are very good at
sportsbook or casinos, now getting
into the bingo market. And this is
muddying the waters even further.”
In turn, bingo affiliates who have
seen their share of the pie shrink
have taken on the “if you can’t beat
’em, join ’em” defense. Over the last
year, Fraser said that a recurring
trend has seen bingo affiliates become bingo operators.
“What they’re thinking is, ‘Wait a
minute. If I’m generating X amount of
traffic and sending it to a bingo room
and getting Y as revenue, why don’t
I just keep all of that traffic and get
a much, much bigger Y figure,’” says
Fraser. “It all makes perfect sense.”
These recent developments may have
slowed the overwhelming progress of
the last five years, but they have far from
stopped it altogether. The online bingo
industry still has the potential to flourish, provided it generates more players
it’s a simple game is a weakness because
you can’t do much with it. You call out the
numbers, the players pick them off and
then somebody wins. If you try to change
that or complicate it, you could hurt its
mass appeal.
“The same goes for content. You always
hear that content is king, but really, how
much can you write about bingo? It’s not
like poker where you could write countless strategy articles. There’s no Doyle
Brunson of bingo. Sure, you can write on
and on about promotions and the like,
but that’s not the kind of content that will
generate new players.”
But the uncomplicated nature of bingo
could also help it expand into other
markets. The reason online bingo
was so popular in the pre-UIGEA
U.S. and absolutely exploded in the
U.K. is the game’s simplicity.
“The beauty
of bingo is its
simplicity, but at
the same time that
is also one of its
major downfalls.”
An example is Costa Bingo, whose
chief executive Richard Skelhorn started
U.K. casino portal Casino Choice in 2001.
Other successful affiliates such as Digital
Prophets and Bingoport have also gone
into the operator space during the last
year.
“Being an affiliate, all you do is recruit
players,” Skelhorn told E-Gaming Review
earlier this year. “That’s what we have
done, day and night, for eight years…This
is a challenge, but knowing how to market
to and get players gives us a head start.”
While Fraser fully understands the reasoning and logic behind affiliates going
to the next step and not only operating
skins, but also becoming operators, he
– Phil Fraser, Focus Online Management
through awareness, product innovation
and expansion into new markets. But,
Fraser points out, this could be easier
said than done.
Product awareness is moving forward
thanks to the well-known players in the
business continuing to expand and develop while other non-gaming brands
– such as Virgin Online Bingo – increase
the game’s popularity and reach.
Product innovation, however, is a bit
more of a challenge.
“The beauty of bingo is its simplicity, but
at the same time that is also one of its major downfalls,” Fraser says. “The fact that
“It’s like a novice gambler walking
into a Vegas casino,” says Fraser.
“He may know how to play blackjack
and roulette and he knows how a slot
machine works. But don’t put him
anywhere near a craps table or Sic
Bo table. It’s just too complicated.”
Another factor in bingo’s success in
the U.S. and U.K. is that it was already integrated into society. With
that said, Fraser’s newest target for
growth is Spain, where he launched
QueBingo.com in 2008 but growth
has been slow for economic reasons.
South America is also a possibility,
but economic and broadband challenges may inhibit the growth. The
game has done well in Scandinavia, and
Fraser feels the next battleground could
well be Italy.
But larger European markets like France
and Germany as well as the Far East are
unlikely to see much traction because of
the lack of history with the game.
“The next greatest growth area has to
have the same culture of the game that the
U.S and U.K. have,” Fraser adds. “When
you’re dealing with a country like that,
bingo is a natural. Despite the stagnant
nature of the market, it can still succeed.
And we’re counting on it to happen.”
Online Bingo — What a Difference a Year Makes
GAZING INTO THE
CRYSTAL BALL
The online
gambling industry
has seen a great deal of
change in its short history. And
the future will likely be more of
the same in that regard. Want to
know what’s next on the regulatory
landscape, or what the next big
innovation in the market will be?
So do we. We asked four “Titans
of Industry” to look into a crystal
ball and tell us what they see
coming down the road.
RIGHT2BET’S CAUTIOUS
OPTIMISM AT THE PROSPECT
OF MUCH-NEEDED CHANGE
by Ari Last, Right2bet
T
here’s no doubt that the
EU’s current status quo
with regards to online
gambling needs to change.
The protectionist behavior
of the governments of
several member states flies in the face
of an EU built upon the bedrock of fair
competition and free trade.
People are no longer fooled by the false
claims espoused by those seeking to
protect state gambling monopolies,
and excuses for banning the superior
competition at the expense of the
consumer are running out.
There are currently 17 cases involving
member states before the European
Court of Justice, and the current
situation of inconsistent, unworkable
and conflicting rules and regulations
regarding the industry simply cannot be
sustained.
The tide toward regulation is creeping
in, with several member states seemingly
realizing that ignoring the fundamental
EU principles of freedom of trade and
services is not a viable option in the
coming years.
The relative success of the Italian
regulation model is encouraging others
to follow suit, and while in principle
right2bet applauds this shift, we are at the
same time extremely cautious as to how far
this regulation will go, and we worry that
rather than strengthening competition
and the power of consumer choice, it will
in fact achieve the opposite.
Under pressure from the EU Commission,
member states have been attempting,
and will continue to attempt, to portray
themselves as working to liberalize, when
in reality they do nothing of the sort.
The recently approved reform in France
is an example of this, whereby the French
now claim to have opened up their market,
when they have only strengthened the
position of the state monopoly, Française
des jeux (FDJ).
They have done this by stating that the
competition is welcome, while at the
same time laying down rules regarding
taxation, product offering and company
location that make the prospect of setting
up in France commercially unattractive.
That is unless you are already a French
supplier, like the FDJ, who will be able
to increase advertising and offer more
services to a customer base that in reality
won’t be faced with much other choice,
particularly in the short-term.
If the Commission fails to challenge socalled gambling reform such as that in
France, they will in essence be paving the
way for other member states to follow
suit, and this is worrying for both private
operators and consumers alike.
Should private operators deem it too
costly and risky to enter heavily fortified
markets we would expect them to embark
on a consolidation strategy, in an attempt
to become players in certain regions
through already established, local service
providers. While this would be better than
there being just one provider available,
the benefits in terms of competition
would fall well short of what a truly open
market could offer the consumer.
Right2bet has been running a betting
challenge for the past few months in
which we’ve compared the odds and
potential winnings offered by state
monopolies and private operators.
The results are truly startling. Consumers
forced to bet with the state provider in
Sweden and Germany make 35 percent
less in winnings than an EU neighbor
who can bet with an array of private
“It’s not only
inferior odds that a
lack of competition
brings; it’s a lower
standard all round
in terms of usability,
products and
customer service.”
providers. In France, the odds offered
by FDJ have resulted in 30 percent less
winnings.
This lack of value is scandalous, and
should member states be allowed to
continue curbing the competition, it is an
offense that will be perpetrated over and
over again.
It’s not only inferior odds that a lack of
competition brings; it’s a lower standard
all round in terms of usability, products
and customer service. Crucially, the
risk to consumers is also increased
when players in search of the best
value and service are ushered into the
realms of black-market betting by local
authorities attempting to push them
Gazing into the Crystal Ball
28
into a less enjoyable and profitable
corner.
The current trend certainly suggests that
the next few years will see more states
regulating their markets. We’re hopeful
that they’ll realize that the responsibility
is upon them to do so in a manner
that ensures their citizens are the real
beneficiaries.
In this respect, the recent words of the
newly appointed Commissioner for
Internal Market and Services, Michel
Barnier, encouraged us. Barnier sternly
told those member states seeking to
prevent private operators entering their
domain that the Commission would
continue reviewing cases between states
and private operators on their individual
merits. This intimated to us that he would
take a tough stance on those seeking to use
the same flawed excuses in their attempts
to maintain their monopolies.
Barnier’s Belgian colleague Etienne
Marique, the president of the country’s
gaming commission, further impressed
us with his remarks that his country
will be using their upcoming time in the
EU Presidency to seek “legal clarity”
with regards to the online gambling
market, and while we’re encouraged by
the apparent realization in Brussels that
change is necessary, we await concrete,
positive developments with bated breath.
society. We’re sure that if the right moves
are made to expose the fallacy of these
claims, the chances will greatly increase
that European citizens will be granted
access to the plethora of reputable
operators available to them.
right2bet has always campaigned for the EU
principles of freedom of trade and services
to be applied to the betting industry in the
same manner that they are applied to many
others. We want a “one-license fits all”
system in place, whereby any EU operator
that has a license in one country should be
granted access to any market within the
EU. This in turn will allow consumers to bet
with whomever they choose.
We believe that the next five years will
see the opening up of the EU’s online
gambling market to a degree, but as far
as we’re concerned it will in all likelihood
not go far enough. Liberalization is most
certainly in the cards, although exactly
how such liberalization is defined over
the next few years will be critical. You
may rest assured that we’ll be doing all
we can to bring about the type of change
that will let all European consumers reap
the benefits that only genuine market
freedom can bring.
As touched on above, member states
have been allowed to use baseless
arguments concerning crime prevention
and consumer protection for too long,
and we’d like to see the concrete proof
provided by independent reports that
refute these claims to be given greater
credence and consideration.
It’s in the interest of monopoly-backers
to fuel the idea that an open gambling
market is bad for the consumer and
Ari is Right2bet’s campaign manager
tasked primarily with building and
maintaining relationships with individuals and organizations who share
the campaign’s desire to see all Europeans benefiting from a free, safe and
secure European gambling market.
29
Structural Growth Drivers
Underpin a Positive Outlook for
the Interactive Gambling Sector
By Gavin Kelleher, H2Gambling Capital
W
hile interactive gambling
has not been immune
from the global financial
crisis of the last two
years, it has continued to
deliver impressive rates
of growth and has displayed resilience
that other sectors have not. H2 estimates
that the global interactive gambling
industry was worth $26.6 billion in 2009,
which was an increase of 13.2 percent
over 2008.
So what does the future hold for the
interactive gambling sector? While we
are not forecasting a significant economic
recovery, we believe the global interactive
gambling sector can continue to grow and
we are forecasting growth of 14 percent in
2010 and 12 percent in 2011. The general
consensus at present is that the worst of
the financial crisis could be behind us and
there are signs that the first “green shoots”
of economic recovery have been seen.
However, we are inclined to remain on
the bearish side in terms of the economic
outlook. High levels of unemployment are
likely to continue in most EU countries,
and the cautious consumer is unlikely
to increase spending any time soon.
Additionally, certain countries’ fiscal
positions remain a worry, such as Greece,
Spain, Portugal and Ireland. So given that
the economic backdrop remains cautious
and a significant rebound is unlikely in the
short term, we believe structural growth
drivers such as regulation, innovation and
penetration will underpin growth in the
interactive gambling industry.
Regulatory drivers
remain positive
Predicting how governments are going
to act in terms of regulation is a difficult
task. Throw in that the regulation would
be surrounding any form of gambling and
that task becomes all the more difficult.
However, we appear to be at a point in
time where there are more countries/
jurisdictions looking to take a favorable
approach to interactive gambling than
there are those that are looking to prohibit
it. Regulation tends to lead to an increase
in interactive gambling activity as markets
become more mainstream due to increased
marketing and more companies becoming
involved in the sector.
Italy, which started to license its online
gambling markets in 2007, is being
viewed widely as a success story for proper
regulation, which allows commercial
competition. The regulated online
poker and online sports betting markets
have grown impressively in Italy since
late 2007, and the regulation has been
successful in moving offshore activity
onshore. The French regulated market is
set to open in 2010, and while initial tax
rates imposed look highly punitive for the
industry, most operators are set to sign
up despite the regulatory conditions, thus
moving “onshore.” Denmark is another
country that is likely to regulate, and,
outside Europe, Australia appears ready
to open its markets to a greater extent.
H2 believes that the deregulation of
interactive gambling across Europe
will be a slow process conducted on a
country-by-country basis but that by
2020 there is the possibility that as
much as 35 percent (in the region of €50
billion) of what could potentially be a
€140 to €150 billon marketplace would
be accounted for by interactive market
channels. However, given the importance
of economies of scale in iGaming and the
concentration of value in just a handful
of member states, H2 believes that the
winners in the European marketplace
will be decided long before this time as
“Regulation tends to
lead to an increase
in interactive
gambling activity
as markets become
more mainstream.”
the Italian, French, Spanish and perhaps
German and Greek markets are played
out in the near future.
In the U.S., the regulatory backdrop is
more complex and everyone is split on
whether regulation will be introduced on
a federal or state level, or if any regulation
will be introduced at all. At this stage,
UIGEA is set to be implemented on
Gazing into the Crystal Ball
30
June 1st 2010, having been delayed in
late 2009, and it will be interesting to
see the impact, if any, this will have on
existing offshore activity taking place in
the U.S. In terms of potential regulation
to be introduced, much has been made
of federal moves from legislators such
as Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and
Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.). However,
while we would not rule out federal-level
legislation/regulation, it has always had
a number of difficult hurdles to jump,
and this time it will be no different. If
any U.S. regulation is introduced, it
looks more likely that it will be on a state
rather than a federal level. As has been
widely reported, numerous states such
as Florida, California and New Jersey
are looking closely at regulating
interstate Internet poker. Our
current forecasts assume no
change in the U.S. situation
from a regulatory perspective,
and we estimate that the U.S.
interactive gambling market was
worth $5.1 billion in 2009. We
have estimated that if the U.S.
were to fully regulate all forms of
interactive gambling that it could
create approximately 30,000
jobs and would generate $22
billion in gross gambling yield in
a full year.
Innovation will
continue to drive
growth in the industry
Innovation has been a key driver
of the industry since its origins in
the mid 1990s and this is likely to
remain the case. A key innovation
in the industry in the last number of
years has been live betting or betting
in running. Leading sports-betting
operators have stated that live betting is
accounting for in some cases more than
50 percent of interactive sports-betting
turnover. While live betting has led to
some cannibalization with traditional
online sports betting, it has grown the
overall online sports-betting market. The
upcoming World Cup in South Africa is
likely to further drive live betting/betting
in running products.
Another area of innovation within the
sector is mobile betting, which we believe
it is on the way to becoming a significant
Gazing into the Crystal Ball
driver of growth. While we have seen
many false starts for mobile over the
years, the introduction of the iPhone and
the impact it has had on mobile devices
in general means operators can finally
offer customers a highly user friendly
and interactive mobile experience in
interactive sports betting. In terms of
other verticals (casino, poker and bingo),
we may not be there just yet in terms of
mobile technology for them to become
a mass-market mobile product offering,
but watch this space.
Outside of betting, innovation in
interactive casino gaming is constantly
occurring, with live casino offerings
becoming more prevalent and many
“Innovation has been
a key driver of the
industry since its
origins in the mid
1990s and this is likely
to remain the case.”
operators reporting stellar growth from
live casinos. In addition, online casino
games are using an increasing level
of interactivity. This interactivity is
what players are demanding and many
operators have stated how games with
high levels of interactivity have been
successful in increasing player life cycles
and player yields. In addition, we are
also seeing more and more convergence
between online gambling and online
gaming. We believe this is likely to
continue, particularly as the current
generation of online gamers matures
into online gamblers. This convergence
is likely to lead to further innovation in
casino games in the future.
Interactive gambling still
remains small in relation to
overall gambling
Given the impressive rates of growth that
have been delivered by the interactive
gambling industry over the last 15 years,
people will still ask how it can continue
to grow at impressive rates. Looking at
the overall interactive gambling market
globally, we estimate that it was worth
$26.6 billion in 2009, just 8.6 percent of
the overall global gambling industry. This
rate of penetration is low compared to
that of other industries. For example, in
the travel industry 42 percent of activity
takes place online, while household
goods see 35 percent of activity
online and computer software
sees 21 percent. We believe the
penetration rate of interactive
gambling will continue to grow.
Our positive view is underpinned
by the fact that broadband
penetration
continues
to
increase, new products continue
to be introduced and the newer
breed of gamblers are more
technologically savvy and thus
more likely to conduct a more
significant proportion of their
gambling online.
In summary, the interactive
gambling industry will continue
to be impacted by the unique
economic times in which we find
ourselves. However, unlike many
other industries, interactive
gambling is in an enviable position
given the structural growth
drivers that are underpinning its
growth. These structural growth drivers
look set to remain in place, which gives
us confidence in the positive view we
have for the future of the industry.
Gavin Kelleher is an independent
gambling consultant who works with
H2 Gambling Capital, a leading gambling market intelligence and consulting group based in the U.K.
31
CONSOLIDATION, DIVERSIFICATION
AND REGULATION
By Clive Hawkswood,
Remote Gaming Association
M
aking predictions about
the remote gambling
industry is always fun.
People can disagree with
you, but at the time they
are made nobody can
prove they are wrong.
Then further down the road when
everyone else has long forgotten about
them it’s easy to go back and quote
selectively to demonstrate your finely
honed skills with a crystal ball.
Of course that only works if at least one
of the predictions comes to pass, so to
hedge my bets it makes sense to make
predictions about lots of issues. The list
below is therefore lengthy, so the odds
are that at least some of them will turn
out to be right.
1. There will be more consolidation
in the industry. I can hardly say that you
heard it here first, but we are a maturing
industry and that is what happens. It is
already happening even though we have
not yet had a so-called “headline making”
deal, and over the next two or three
years I would expect that to accelerate.
There are various drivers for this but
one of the sticking points in the past,
especially for publicly listed companies,
has been uncertainty about potential
legal liabilities. The risks of that can be
expected to recede as greater legal clarity
emerges in a whole range of markets. It
will happen; it’s just a question of when.
2. With consolidation will come
accelerated diversification. Online
gamblers want and increasingly expect a
one-stop shop. Companies that specialize
in one form of gambling already find
it hard when their carefully cultivated
and expensively recruited customers go
off to a competitor to access a different
kind of product. For instance, an online
sportsbook that might attract great new
business because of interest in the World
Cup in South Africa this year would be
missing a trick if those newly attracted
customers then go off to play poker or
roulette somewhere else.
In the same way that specialist food outlets
have been squeezed by the growth of
shopping malls and supermarkets, it will
become harder for niche operators to thrive
in the online gambling industry. There
will always be exceptions to that rule and
it would be a duller place if that weren’t
so, but the economics of competition will
inevitably make it tougher.
3. Industry profits will be taxed
at a higher rate. Although it sticks in
the throat a bit to say it, this will be the
real price of more companies gaining
unfettered market access. There will be a
huge range of tax issues to address, not
the least of which will be avoiding the
threat of double taxation, but a “higher”
(not “high”) tax burden will become
the norm. The transition will not be
an easy one for the industry because it
calls for a huge amount of education of
policymakers, regulators and politicians
in lots of jurisdictions. Almost without
exception their points of reference will be
the tax regimes they have in place for their
domestic brick-and-mortar industries,
and that is irrespective of whether
they have private-sector industries or
state monopolies. It is and will be an
uphill struggle to persuade them that
the business models for off and online
gambling are completely different.
4. Consumer demand and market
growth will continue strongly for
the foreseeable future. Prohibition
and overly restrictive tax and regulatory
regimes do not work. That is a bitter pill
for some jurisdictions to swallow, but
like it or not they will find it difficult to
bury their heads in the sand and plow
on regardless with policies that do not
work in practice. In the wider world of
e-commerce, of which online gambling
In the same way
that specialty
food outlets have
been squeezed
by the growth of
shopping malls and
supermarkets, so it
will become harder
for niche operators
to thrive in the
online gambling
industry.
Gazing into the Crystal Ball
32
is a successful part, technology has
empowered consumers in a way that even
10 years ago would have been hard to
imagine. Governments that ignore what
their citizens want will have to adjust
their thinking.
Consumers are the most important part
of the industry and yet tend to be the
most readily overlooked when policies
are being developed by governments.
In terms of spending they can and do
vote with their feet, and the first real
generations of Internet shoppers will
boost e-commerce spending as a whole,
and the online gambling industry is wellplaced to ride that wave.
Growth will come from the continued
supply of excellent gambling products
that meet that demand. There are many
jurisdictions where legal restrictions
prevent the most effective promotion
of online gambling products and
companies. As a greater body of evidence
emerges which demonstrates that
online gambling is not some terrible
evil that makes problem gambling
rates go through the roof, regulators
will struggle to objectively justify these
kinds of advertising hurdles. However,
online consumers do have the freedom
to circumvent these barriers, and if they
want online gambling products they will
seek them out. The continued strength of
the U.S. online gambling market should
be proof enough of that.
Gambling is a regulated activity just
about everywhere and there is no real
prospect of that changing, but what we
should be able to predict safely is that, as
relationships are built and grow between
the industry and regulators, more
pragmatic regimes will evolve. There will
always be a healthy tension between the
two, but as more regulators gain a proper
understanding of how the industry
works and the huge range of tools that
companies utilize to underpin effective
regulation, they will gain the confidence
to relax the reins of control.
Fear of the unknown is common
everywhere. For many people in positions
of influence combining the Internet and
gambling is a match made in hell. It
ignites the prejudices and fears of lots of
people, and we ignore that at our peril.
The answer to that is to become known
Gazing into the Crystal Ball
rather than unknown; to present a human
face; to inform in a nonthreatening way.
That takes time, and we are still a young
industry with an undeserved reputation
that too often precedes us. But my
prediction is that with more time we will
be seen as responsible partners and, as
a British politician said of the British
gambling industry a few years ago, we
can move from the shady side of the
street and be accepted as a very reputable
industry with high standards.
When that happens, other business sectors
and their shareholders will also become
more comfortable with the concept of
white-labeling and joint ventures. Again
it is surely only a matter of time before we
see the Googles, Facebooks and Tescos of
this world with their own branded online
gambling suites.
5. The convergence of technologies.
At the moment it is common practice to
differentiate among online gambling,
mobile
gambling
and
interactive
gambling. Those demarcations are a
result of the technology that we began
with a few years ago and reflect the
differing limitations of the respective
delivery systems. Those differences
will be largely eroded as societies move
to having single devices that are both
portable and capable of providing
their entertainment, information and
audiovisual needs. The rapid rollout of
iPods, Blackberries, laptops and multifunction mobile phones points to the
way ahead. It can only be positive for the
remote gambling industry.
6. The industry will have to grapple
with shortages of skilled staff.
Thankfully, there are many parts of our
business where people with transferable
skills can quickly slot in. But attracting
good people from other sectors and
letting them settle in can take time, and
every time a business expands or new
markets open the thinner that existing
experience is spread. Some companies
are already addressing this through longterm strategic planning—for instance with
in-house training programs for software
specialists—but it is easy to see a more
structured approach being adopted with
a greater degree of succession planning
built into company organizations.
7. In many jurisdictions, the introduction of sportsbooks will be the
thin end of the online gambling
wedge. The very notable exception to
this is the USA, where there is almost
paranoia in some quarters about sports
betting (with the exception of horseracing). This is at best strange given that
half the country seems to have no trouble
getting a bet down on the Super Bowl every year, but unless the huge sports lobby changes its position dramatically any
new licensed market in the USA will be
restricted to online poker and hopefully
online casinos.
8. My next prediction is a very safe
one: sports leagues will fight tooth
and nail to extract higher revenues
from sportsbooks. This might be
through statutory levies, new IP rights,
commercial deals or a combination
of all three, but the resentment felt
against betting operators by a wide
range of sporting authorities is hard to
underestimate. Sports are traditionally
given a sympathetic ear by governments
in a way that we can only dream about.
They will stoke the fires with ill-founded
tales of corruption and betting-related
match fixing. This strategy plays to every
stereotyped view that politicians and
others have of the gambling industry and
will be used by sports to seek control of
the types of bets that can be offered and,
as they put it, to secure a “fair return”
for the use of their products. The EU will
be the main battleground, and it will get
messy.
One final prediction? Serbia at 66/1
for the World Cup.
Clive has been Chief Executive of the
Remote Gambling Association since
2004. Before that he spent six years
as a policy advisor to the British Government on gambling issues and earlier in his career worked for several
years in the betting industry.
33
The Future of Internet Gaming:
Some Factors to Consider
By Murray Marshall,
Kahnawake Gaming Commission
I
t is, of course, impossible
to predict with any accuracy what the future of
Internet gaming may be
— particularly if the forecast extends beyond the
next two years. The nature of the industry
is such that it changes quickly and has the
capacity to morph in unexpected directions; for example, the explosion of peerto-peer (poker) gaming in the early 2000s
had a profound effect on the industry.
That said, there are certain identifiable
factors that will influence the industry in
the foreseeable future.
Technology
Obviously, the online gaming industry
would not exist without the 20th-century
technological phenomenon of the
Internet. Technological advances have
been, and will continue to be, a major
influence on the growth and direction of
the industry.
As previously mentioned, the advent of
peer-to-peer technologies made possible
the rapid growth of online poker, which
in the early 2000s single-handedly took
the industry to a whole new level. Recall
that shortly after its initial public offering
in 2005, PartyGaming was valued at over
$12 billion!
A necessary complement to peerto-peer technologies was increased
bandwidth requirements. Advances in
broadband Internet access — both in
terms of bandwidth and accessibility
to the consumer — have impacted and
will continue to impact the industry.
Increased bandwidth enables all gaming
operators to offer better graphics, sound
effects and overall functionality for their
games. It allows games to be played
using interactive formats, eliminating or
reducing the need for time-consuming
software downloads. Broadband has also
made possible new, bandwidth-intensive
forms of gaming such as video streaming
“live dealers,” which is particularly
important for the Asian market.
In the Internet world of shrinking
attention spans, speed is king.
In terms of accessibility to the consumer, eMarketer opined in its 2006
U.K. Online Report that “there also is a
strong correlation between broadband
and online gambling, so as broadband
penetration grows the market for online gambling will continue to grow.”
The increased popularity of online
gaming in Europe and Asia in the past
few years is driven, at least in part, by
increased accessibility to broadband
connectivity. It is safe to predict that as
access to high-speed connectivity continues to grow, so will the popularity of
Internet gaming.
In the past two or three years, gaming
through the use of wireless devices —
particularly mobile phones — has become
a fast-growing segment of the industry.
Smart phones with larger screens and
better graphics combined with more
efficient download capabilities and more
affordable data plans have all contributed
to the rise of the mobile phone as a
platform of interest to many gaming
operators and players.
The 5th Annual Mobile Gaming Meeting
held in London in November 2008
concluded that it was very possible to
improve gaming revenues earned from
the games of blackjack, poker, roulette
and other casino games with the help of
mobile devices within a calendar year.
“Increased
bandwidth . . .
allows games to
be played using
interactive formats
– eliminating
or reducing the
need for timeconsuming software
downloads.”
The jurisdictions with service providers
that can best fulfill the industry’s technological needs — bandwidth, latency, reli-
Gazing into the Crystal Ball
34
ability, redundancy — are well-positioned
to become market leaders.
Shifting political and legal
positions
There is no doubt that, with the exception
of Australia — some states of which
enacted enabling legislation in the late
1990s and were then quickly throttled
back by their federal government — the
early years of Internet gaming belonged
to the smaller jurisdictions: Antigua,
Kahnawake and, later, Isle of Man, Malta,
Alderney and Gibraltar.
In 2005, the United Kingdom enacted an extensively revised Gambling Act,
which included provisions
for the licensing and regulation of “remote gambling.”
The U.K. Gambling Act provided that operators that
were licensed in other EEA
countries – or licensed in
other “white-listed” jurisdictions – could advertise
their services in the U.K.
Although many operators
were keen to tap into the
U.K. market, few were enthusiastic about the prospect of paying U.K. taxes on
their gaming revenues.
As a result, many operators
chose to locate in white-listed jurisdictions that offered
the best of both worlds: the
ability to advertise in the
U.K., combined with the
more favorable tax rates of
offshore jurisdictions. This
situation is unlikely to continue indefinitely as the U.K. is actively exploring ways to
restrict the taxation advantages of being
licensed in a white-listed jurisdiction.
In the event the U.K. implements steps
to limit the current desirability of being
licensed in a white-listed jurisdiction,
it will create an imperative for affected
jurisdictions to offer other competitive
advantages or face a decline in their
market share.
European markets have also been, and
will continue to be, affected by important
Glazing into the Crystal Ball
decisions of the European Court of Justice
in cases such as Gambelli and Placanica.
Commentators have predicted that the
European online gambling market will
expand as recent rulings that gamblers
are entitled to the same guarantees of
choice and value begin to sink in within
EU member countries: “Change is in the
Cards.”
If there was ever any doubt that a single
legislative act could impact the Internet
gaming world, that doubt was removed on
October 13, 2006, when the United States
formally enacted its Unlawful Internet
Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA).
“The efforts of some
U.S. legislators . . .
to enact laws that
would regulate, rather
than prohibit, online
gaming—if successful—
would clearly have a
significant impact on
the industry.”
Literally overnight, several major gaming
companies shed billions of dollars of
stock value and took steps to beat a hasty
retreat from the U.S. market. European
and Asian markets suddenly had a whole
new appeal as the industry scrambled to
align their business and marketing plans,
corporate structures and, of course,
payment processing arrangements, to the
new post-UIGEA realities.
Among the many ironies that resulted
from the enactment of UIGEA was that
it was most effective in dissuading only
the largest and most reputable gaming
operators from taking U.S. players.
UIGEA did little or nothing to reduce
the number of players in the U.S. — the
same market potential in the U.S. exists
in the post-UIGEA world as it did prior
to the law’s passage. All the UIGEA
accomplished was to force U.S. players to
use the services of smaller — and in some
cases unregulated and less reputable —
online gaming sites.
As a result of recent expansion of European and Asian markets, most reports indicate that the U.S. no longer has the lion’s
share of global online gaming players,
though it continues to offer a large and
demographically
desirable player base. Accordingly, the efforts of some
U.S. legislators like Rep.
Barney Frank (D-Mass.)
to enact laws that would
regulate, rather than prohibit, online gaming — if
successful — would clearly
have a significant impact
on the industry.
In Canada, although the
federal government has
kept its head planted
firmly in the sand, several
provinces have indicated
that they are moving ahead
with plans to take gaming
operations — particularly
poker — online. Rather than
issuing licenses to thirdparty operators, the plan
calls for existing provincial
gaming corporations to
maintain their monopoly
over gaming — in this case,
online gaming.
Given that Canadian provinces are
constitutionally
restrained
from
accepting players from outside their
geographic boundaries, and given their
relatively modest population bases,
British Columbia, Quebec and the
Atlantic provinces have indicated they
will “partner” to create a viable pool of
online poker players. Whether or not the
plan is financially viable, it is at least a
clear indication that Canada is moving in
the direction of their U.K. cousins, rather
than their U.S. neighbors – i.e., choosing
to regulate, rather than prohibit, Internet
gaming.
35
Will smaller jurisdictions like Antigua,
Kahnawake and Alderney be able to
maintain their market share in view of
the rapidly shifting political and legal
positions in other, larger jurisdictions? In
my view, in the short and medium term,
it is likely that smaller jurisdictions will
continue to play an important role in the
industry. However, to survive in the longer
term they must focus on advantages that
larger jurisdictions cannot offer – in
particular, preferable taxation rates.
Smaller jurisdictions would also benefit
from developing closer working relationships at a regulatory level. A network of
like-minded smaller jurisdictions that would allow
for reciprocal recognition,
or portability of licenses
would be of significant
interest to online gaming
operators and would offer
a platform that could compete with the monopolistic
approach that seems to be
favored by larger jurisdictions.
Confluence
of regulatory
oversight
In the early years of the
industry
(mid-1990s),
regulatory oversight of
online gaming was either
nonexistent or focused
more
on
“licensing”
with little attention to
“regulation.”
The first
credible
regulatory
model emanated from Australia and
in particular, Queensland’s Interactive
Gambling (Player Protection) Act, 1998.
The Queensland model served as a basis
for the original regulations developed
by several other jurisdictions including
Kahnawake, Antigua and Malta. These
early models were essentially land-based
gaming regulations loosely adapted to the
online gaming industry.
In the first half of the 2000s, although
a number of jurisdictions established
regulatory regimes for online gaming,
there was little if any attempt to reconcile
these various regulatory models – creating
a global patchwork that provided little
certainty or protection to players.
Since
approximately
2005,
some
jurisdictions initiated efforts to develop
working relationships among their
respective regulators. For example,
the Kahnawake Gaming Commission
(KGC) entered into Memoranda of
Understanding with its counterparts in
Antigua (2005) and Malta (2006).
Over the past several years, regulatory
models have become much more
sophisticated and more specifically tooled
to address the unique requirements and
“The movement
toward creating a
common standard
for the regulation
of online gaming
has been gaining
momentum over the
past several years.”
the International Association for Gaming
Regulators (IAGR) is actively addressing
this issue. eCOGRA, which describes itself
as “a non-profit, London-based player
protection and standards organisation
that provides an international framework
for best operational practice requirements
with particular emphasis on fair and
responsible gambling,” has developed a
comprehensive set of requirements for
the auditing and monitoring of online
gaming operators that has been approved
by the European Gaming and Betting
Association (EGBA) and by the KGC.
There is little doubt that the next few
years will see a confluence
of regulatory regimes for
the online gaming industry. The development and
implementation of compatible regulatory standards are clearly in the
best interests of players,
and are a further indication of the maturation of
the industry.
Murray Marshall has
been a practising Canadian lawyer for over 22
years and is a member
of the bars of Alberta
and Québec. He has
served as legal counsel
and advisor to the Kahnawake Gaming Commission since its inception
in 1996 and, in 2009, was
named as General Counsel to the Commission.
demands of the Internet gaming industry.
New categories of licensure were created
— particularly in Malta and Alderney — to
address the distinctions among networks,
operators and software providers. In the
latter part of the 2000s, in response to
industry demands for redundancy, several
jurisdictions created mechanisms that
allowed operators to locate their servers
within their territories for the purpose of
“disaster recovery.”
The movement toward creating a common
standard for the regulation of online
gaming has been gaining momentum over
the past several years. A subcommittee of
Gazing into the Crystal Ball
Gazing into the Crystal Ball
THE FACE OF THINGS TO COME
Antonio Esfandiari works his magic for Dan Fleyshman and Victory Poker
By Aaron Todd
W
hen Victory Poker held its official launch party in
February, it already had more than a dozen professional players endorsing the site. Most of them
have built successful careers as online poker pros, and
many — like Paul Wasicka, who won more than $6.1 million as the runner-up at the 2006 World Series of Poker (WSOP) — have made waves in live tournaments.
Hard-core poker aficionados and Internet poker forum readers are sure to recognize some of the names on Victory’s roster. But the Average Joe, who might casually watch poker
on TV when nothing else is on, probably wouldn’t recognize
any of them even if they were sitting at the same poker table
— including Wasicka. Well, all of them except for one
— Antonio Esfandiari.
Esfandiari burst onto the poker scene before the “Moneymaker” boom, finishing
third at the Lucky Chances Gold Rush
tournament in San Francisco during
the WPT’s first season in November
2002. Nicknamed “The Magician”
thanks to his previous profession,
Esfandiari memorably outplayed
Phil Hellmuth, winning a legion
of fans by bullying, and eventually eliminating, the “Poker
Brat.”
“Antonio is The Magician, he’s
the magic man, and right now,
Phil Hellmuth is the wizard, and
[Esfandiari is] making his chips
disappear,” said WPT commentator Mike Sexton during the
Travel Channel’s broadcast.
While the performance gave him
notoriety in the poker world, Esfandiari’s take for his third-place finish
was a modest $44,000, as the event’s
buy-in was just $3,000 and there were
only 152 players.
But just 15 months later, after Chris Moneymaker’s win at the 2003 WSOP
helped create a boom in tournament poker, Esfandiari became the youngest
player to become an instant millionaire in a poker tournament. He bested a
field of 382 at the 2004 LA Poker Classic, winning the $10,000 buy-in event to
take home nearly $1.4 million. That summer, Esfandiari won a WSOP bracelet
in a Pot-Limit Hold’em event, becoming one of just a handful of players to win
a WPT tournament and a WSOP bracelet in the same year.
In 2005, Esfandiari was third at the National Heads Up Poker Championship, finished third in WPT and WSOP Circuit events, and made
his second WSOP final table. He has been a staple on televised
poker events ever since, and a deep run in last year’s WSOP
Main Event (24th) continued to advance his credentials.
It’s no surprise, then, that Victory Poker CEO Dan Fleyshman calls Esfandiari “The Face” of his new venture. And
it’s a title that’s stuck to the 32-year-old poker pro.
“All the other pros on Team Victory have now literally
started calling me ‘Face,’” says Esfandiari. “I’ve had
more airtime than anybody else, so we joke about it
all the time.”
While Esfandiari may be the face of the franchise,
the real secret of the online room’s early success
is the man behind the scenes who signed him.
Fleyshman knew he needed something big to
get Victory Poker off the ground. It turned out
that something big lived in the same Las Vegas condominium complex he called home.
Fleyshman and Esfandiari have known
each other for several years, dating back to a poker seminar that
Fleyshman attended where Esfandiari was one of the teachers. Fleyshman, who lived
in San Diego at the time,
had built a business from
the ground up starting in
high school by getting a
trademark on the phrase
The Face of Things to Come
“Who’s Your Daddy?” He launched a
Who’s Your Daddy-branded clothing line
that sold in Kohl’s and Mervyn’s, grossing more than $15 million in sales. At the
seminar, Esfandiari learned that Fleyshman was the youngest CEO of a publicly
traded company in America, and that bit
of information stuck with him. Esfandiari
visited Fleyshman during a trip to San Diego and the two became fast friends. Just
over a year ago, Fleyshman relocated to
Las Vegas and moved into the same condominium tower as Esfandiari. Last summer, Fleyshman approached Esfandiari
to see if he would be interested in joining
him in his online poker venture.
“I knew if I had him, with his charisma,
he could convince the rest of the crew to
sign on and it would give me the credibility to do a lot of other things within
the poker world,” says Fleyshman.
The Face of Things to Come
Esfandiari, who had previously promoted Ultimate Bet and the World Poker
Tour’s European-facing online poker
room, was quick to agree.
“I think Dan’s a great businessman, so of
course I was interested,” says Esfandiari.
“To be part of something from its inception, from its beginning, felt like the right
move. I didn’t want to be one of the peons
at Full Tilt or PokerStars. With Ultimate
Bet I was one of three people, with World
Poker Tour, I was the only guy, and if I
was going to sign another deal, I wanted
to be one of the main guys.”
Once Esfandiari signed on, a cadre of his
friends and fellow professionals joined
him. Dan “Blitz” Bilzerian, Keith “KG”
Gipson, Brian “TSARRAST” Rast, Andrew
“good2cu” Robl and David “The Maven”
Chicotsky joined the group, as did Wasicka,
Lee Markholt, Alec Torelli and a handful of
others professionals. Fleyshman also made
some news in the poker press by signing
2007 Playboy Playmate of the Year Sara
Jean Underwood to a sponsorship deal.
While assembling his team, Fleyshman
was faced with his next big decision: selecting the online poker network that
would host his players. Instead of choosing one of the industry’s major players,
Fleyshman opted for the Everleaf Poker
Network, which then had an average of
less than 100 cash game players at any
given time. He moved to Malta, where
Everleaf is based, to have direct access to
the software developers so he could be in
constant communication with them on
what he needed to build his site.
“I chose Everleaf because the software
developers had just won back-to-back in-
ternational awards for creativity and the
owners were respected by many industry
professionals,” said Fleyshman. “I could
have gone with an obvious choice, like the
Cake Network, but I knew that with Everleaf I would be the premier site on the network and I would get a lot of help from the
staff, since our success would have a direct
impact on their success.”
It was a decision that many in the poker
affiliate community derided.
“Everlead [sic] has the worst player retention of any site I’ve ever worked with bar
none,” wrote leporello in the Poker Affiliate Listings forums. “Crap network, crap
software, too many no-name skins being
bought for $10 of which Victory Poker will
just be another in a long line of fails. You
can polish your shit and dress it in a tuxedo, but at the end of the day, it’s still shit.”
Victory Poker CEO Dan Fleyshman
calls Esfandiari “The Face” of his
new venture. And it’s a title that’s
stuck to the 32-year-old poker pro.
Continued on page 44
The Face of Things to Come
“Look for me at the top!”
The GPWA Times goes
one-on-one with Victory
Poker pro and 2007 Playboy
Playmate of the Year
Sara Jean Underwood
Why did you decide to get involved with online
poker? At first I thought it would be just a fun hobby to
pick up, but the more I learned about poker and how to
play the more I enjoyed it. In a way it has become my new
obsession. Poker and especially online poker has become
so popular these last few years, I wanted to see what all
the fuss was about!
Why do you enjoy playing poker? I like playing poker
for so many reasons. It’s a great stress reliever. No matter
what is going on in my life I know I can sit down at my
computer and escape from it all and just concentrate and
get lost in a poker tournament. It’s also a great personal
challenge that I have set for myself. Poker is mostly a
male-dominated sport so I am determined to become
a real contender at the table and show the men that
women can do this too!
We heard you did pretty well in your first
tournament. What was that experience like?
Yeah, I got fourth place in the first live tournament
I played in! At the time I didn’t realize what
a big deal that was. Now I know it’s
not so common to make it to a
final table, even for some of
the best players in the
world, but because
I was new to the
The Face of Things to Come
whole poker world at the time I didn’t realize what a
great thing it was! Now I look back and I’m like, “How
the hell did that happen?”
Do you think men play differently against you
than they would against, say, a forty-something
man with a baseball cap, beard and greasy T-shirt?
I think guys definitely play differently against me, but the
advantages I have being a young woman at a poker table
are just as great as the disadvantages, so I think it evens
itself out. Some guys like having me around, I think,
simply because you spend so much time at that one table
and it’s nice to have someone of the opposite sex around,
so they might be less likely to call me and just fold. But
on the other hand guys also feel like they can push me
around with big raises or reraises (which they can’t), so
being me definitely has its advantages and disadvantages
at the poker table.
Is poker a sexy game? Poker is ABSOLUTELY a sexy
game. There are so many young and attractive men
dominating the poker world, and women too for that
matter. Many professional poker players have the
same lifestyle as rappers or professional athletes: lots
of money, expensive and flashy cars and houses, beautiful
women on their arms, and lots of endorsement deals.
Poker is taking over!
What should people expect to see in the “search
for the next Victory Poker pro” competition? This
competition is going to be so much fun! People are going
to get to see how these pros live and want to be a part of
it. You are going to see everything—extreme challenges
that test the contestants’ physical and mental capacity,
beautiful women everywhere, drama, breakdowns,
players winning extreme amounts of money—almost
anything you can think of!
Is there anything else we should know about
you, poker and/or Victory Poker? Look for me at
the top! It’s not going to be today or tomorrow but I
am putting in so much time and hard work, I am going
to be up there with the best of them. You just wait
and see!
44
Continued from page 41
Fleyshman was quick to respond.
“[Everleaf] was a very small network but
since their merger with UPN network
and the fact that I spent a zillion dollars
in marketing so far, they are now directly behind BODOG and BETFAIR in size
on PokerScout,” Fleyshman wrote under the username vpCEO. “I’m committed to doing good things for the poker
community and building a strong team
of players which is up to 19 pros now.
Once I get to work everything out with
Jeremy [Enke], myself and the affiliate
team look forward to working with [affiliates].”
Lights . . . Camera . . .
and off-the-wall Action!
One of the reasons Antonio Esfandiari has been so successful as a professional poker
player is his friendship with fellow poker pro Phil “The Unabomber” Laak. Esfandiari
famously enjoys a lavish lifestyle, and he enjoyed the finer things in life long before
he had established himself as a successful player. Laak, who is six years older, saw
the youngster going through his entire bankroll in a weekend, and helped him
establish bankroll rules so he wouldn’t go broke.
“Victory Poker looks like a site that’s run
by poker players and I’m actually amazed
at how rare that has become with new
skins/sites that launch,” wrote Trev. “Or
maybe their marketing team is just that
good that they sold me.”
Their friendship has grown as the two have become successful on the tournament
circuit, and they have often worked together on projects. Most notably, the two
taped a show titled “I Bet You,” where they walked around and made prop bets from
a few hundred to several thousand dollars on everything under the sun, like who
would get more tips as a bartender, who would be a better basketball coach, and
what type of underwear a woman on the street was wearing (yes, they really asked
a woman that question, and yes, she really answered).
“I never thought I would consider promoting an Everleaf skin, but I’m getting more
and more interested,” Newjabber wrote.
“I would never go up to a woman and ask her that without cameras,” Esfandiari
says. “But if the camera’s on me, I can do anything.”
Fleyshman’s measured response is no accident; he understands just how big a role
affiliates will play in Victory Poker’s success or failure. The site offers 35 percent
commissions, among the highest in the Internet poker market.
The show aired for two seasons on MOJO, but the network folded in 2008. (You can
see entire episodes on Esfandiari’s Web site, magicantonio.com.) Esfandiari and
Laak filmed three seasons of the show, and are currently shopping for a network to
air the third season.
The direct approach had an immediate
impact on the impressions of affiliates.
“Affiliates are the most important part of
growing Victory,” says Fleyshman. “The
ad campaigns are great for branding, but
affiliates are where the true conversions
are at. When things work and affiliates really convert, them I’m willing to put in the
money, time and effort to make everyone
happy.”
While Fleyshman knows where his bread
is buttered in terms of affiliate relationships, he also knows that the affiliates
need something to sell to their players,
and he hasn’t been shy about marketing the site. He offers players 40 percent
rakeback, and he’s signed one of the largest teams of pros for an online room since
Full Tilt’s launch, using the slogan “We
Made It, We’ll Show You How.”
The Face of Things to Come
“It was just so much fun to walk around and mess with people, bet on random
stuff, hang out with your buddy all day and have people record it,” says Esfandiari.
“I really miss ‘I Bet You.’”
While they are no longer filming the show, the two remain good friends. Before
Esfandiari signed on with Victory Poker, he almost partnered with Laak to sponsor
the online poker room Unabomber Poker on the Cake Network, but they ultimately
decided to work independently in the online poker market. And while the two have
been known to bet on everything under the sun, Esfandiari insists that there’s no
prop bet on which room will ultimately be more successful. But maybe that’s just
because they hadn’t thought of it yet.
– Aaron Todd
46
A two-minute video showing Esfandiari
being shot by a 22-caliber pistol while
wearing a bulletproof vest in Blitz
Bilzerian’s condominium in Las Vegas is
on the VictoryPoker.net Web site.
Dan “Blitz” Bilzerian
And Fleyshman isn’t just using the slogan as marketing fodder; he’s putting his
money where his mouth is. Victory Poker
just started a $100,000 promotion that
will award the winner tournament buyins, cash, a car, clothes and a condo on
the Las Vegas Strip for one year. The contest was launched with a slick online video, and 25 people who upload one-minute
videos making a case for their inclusion in
the contest will be selected as finalists.
“I want to market the fun, the emotions
and the aspirations involved in poker,”
says Fleyshman. “I’m taking a ‘lifestyle’
marketing approach because these are
our real lives.”
The competition will be taped and is being
pitched to television networks. Fleyshman
admits that there’s no guarantee that it will
be picked up, but with Victory Poker putting up the money and the talent, it should
be attractive to network executives. And
just in case he is unable to find a televised
home for the contest, Fleyshman will have
an in-house production team film everything so that it can be released either as a
DVD or on the Internet.
The Face of Things to Come
Victory Poker has already made its presence known with videos on the Internet.
In addition to the five-minute, 39-second video produced to introduce the Victory Poker Pro promotion, a two-minute
video showing Esfandiari being shot by
a 22-caliber pistol while wearing a bulletproof vest in Bilzerian’s condominium
in Las Vegas is on the VictoryPoker.net
Web site.
“Blitz is a maniac,” says Esfandiari. “He
was shooting this bulletproof vest on the
ground in his condo with a gun. And I’m
like, ‘So if I wore it, you could shoot me?’
He was all over it. It was a pretty intense
rush for me. I liked it; I don’t think I’d
do it again, but anything for Victory, you
know?”
In addition to brief Web video spots, Esfandiari has managed to find other ways
to promote Victory Poker. He will appear
on the season premier of HBO’s “Entourage” this summer with Torelli.
“It’s not like I have a real role,” Esfandiari says. “I’m just sitting at a poker table.
You’re going to see my head for like four
seconds. I have a line, but I don’t think it
will make the cut. Nick Cassavetes, a famous director who is also a good buddy of
mine, is at the poker table while Jeremy
Piven comes up and they get in this argument and they walk away, and I’m just
hanging out next to Nick, playing poker.”
While Esfandiari may try to minimize his
role, he and Torelli did wear their Victory Poker patches during the filming of
a scene that millions of people will see
either when the show premiers or down
the road in repeated airings. When asked
how he was able to convince the producers to let them wear the patches, Esfandiari responded, “‘The Face’ has special
powers, you know?”
Despite exciting promotions, rapid
growth and a great deal of buzz its first
few months, Victory Poker still has a
long way to go to compete with the big
boys in the Internet poker industry. But
that doesn’t faze Fleyshman, who has
already built one company from the
ground up and is looking for another
success story, all before his 30th
birthday.
“My goal is to become one of the top-10
online poker sites,” says Fleyshman. “But
I’m not expecting to become the next
Full Tilt or PokerStars. It’s amazing how
many players have been registering every
day from all over the world. I will keep
signing new pros and keep doing new affiliate and marketing deals because I’m
positive that we are going to reach that
goal. We’ve been growing much quicker
than I expected and there’s still so much
more to come.”
48
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AFFILIATE
INTERVIEW SERIES
Sense and
Sensibility
– and SEO
Four wild, wacky webmasters
who party down at least three
or four times a week? Not this
time. These interviewees are a
sensible bunch and have many
fine traits in common, most notably their top-notch organizational skills, appreciation for the
importance of SEO and highly
disciplined approach to dealing with e-mail!
As usual, they are a geographically diverse group, taking time
out from their busy lives in the
U.K., USA, Italy and the Netherlands to share their observations and insights with us.
We’re sure you’ll enjoy meeting this quality quartet, and we
guarantee you’ll also learn a
thing or two about how to survive and thrive in online gaming
as you read their stories.
Mark | KasinoKing
In Hastings,
doing your
homework is
half the battle!
How long have you been working in the
industry? What first drew you to it? I’ve
worked in the industry for four years. As
a player, I couldn’t find any sites which
gave the information I personally wanted to see, so I created my own.
What do you like about it? What don’t
you like? I like working from home with
totally flexible hours, and being my own
boss. I don’t like rogue casinos and affiliate programs ripping people off.
What surprised you most about the industry? Microgaming withdrawing from
the USA and not finding a way to work
around it.
Which of your five sites is the biggest
money earner? www.KasinoKing.co.uk.
To what do you attribute this? It’s much
bigger and has more info than the others
– therefore it gets LOADS more visitors.
Are you a full-time online gambling affiliate, or do you hold down another job
as well? I was only part-time for the first
two years (had an 8-5 day job), but when
my daughter was born in 2008 I became
a “house husband” and “full-time” affiliate while my wife still goes to work.
We keep hearing that economic conditions are improving and player traffic
is increasing. How do your earnings for
the first quarter of 2010 compare to the
same quarter a year ago and to the final
quarter of 2009? 2010 Q1 was 16 percent
down compared to 2009 Q1, but 36 percent up from 2009 Q4.
How do your family and friends feel
about how you make your living? Delighted and probably a bit jealous!
*Due to space constraints, we could not print the
interviews in their entirety. The complete text will be
posted at gpwa.org.
You posted recently that you like to gamble online and that Ladbrokes is your
casino of choice. What is it that you like
about Ladbrokes? The best thing about
Ladbrokes WAS their very generous Daily,
Weekly and Monthly +EV bonuses from
which I won literally £1,000s over the
last 2+ years. I say WAS because in recent
months they have made the wagering on
their bonuses much worse for the player
and many are no longer worth doing.
What exactly is a “Bonus Bandit” and
why do you characterize yourself as
one? Just seemed like a good alternative
name to Bonus Hunter! I enjoy taking
the more generous bonuses and trying to
beat the casino by making a decent profit. Nearly all of my deposits are made to
claim a bonus.
You have strong feelings about programs that have negative carryover.
Why do you feel affiliates should stay
away from programs with NCO? I can
understand the casino’s point of view
and why they have NCO, but why
would anyone want to work with that
millstone round their neck when about
95 percent of programs don’t have it?
I have had several programs where I
earned nothing for six, nine, 12 and
even 18 months straight despite player
activity, just because one player had a
lucky big win. It may be okay for the
big affiliates who bring in hundreds of
players – but it’s a nightmare for small
ones like myself.
What did you do before you joined the
online gaming industry? And just how
different is what you’re doing right
now? I was always an “office pleb” doing the 8-5, sitting at a desk in an office. Started as a Draughtsman, then
Purchasing, Materials Control, Purchasing again and finally Production
Control. I still sit at a desk in front of
a PC – but now I’m doing what I want
and really enjoy doing rather than
what someone else tells me to do.
How long do you give yourself for responding to e-mail? And what e-mail
management tips can you offer? If a
player contacts me I usually reply immediately – within 24 hours max. For
53
Age: Old! (49 if you must publish it)
Hometown: Worthing, Sussex, U.K.
Currently residing in: Hastings, Sussex, U.K.
Favorite food: Pizza
One book everyone must read:
The Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham
Sites: KasinoKing.co.uk, SlotBeaters.com,
RivalGamingSlots.com, usaOKcasinos.com,
ArcadeSlotsOnline.com
4. Alan Shearer – living legend – and
5. my wife – would not want to go to dinner without her.
When you need to get as far away from
work as possible, where do you go? To
the golf course!
For people not living by the sea, tell them
what they’re missing. It’s just so nice to
be able to walk out of my front door and
be on the sea-front in 5 minutes. You can
sit on a sea-front bench and look out to
nothing but water and sky and forget
about all your troubles and strife. It feels
like you are in the middle of nowhere and
is just so relaxing.
other matters I admit I am pretty useless!
I get something like 25 e-mails per day – I
delete the crap and keep the ones which
need attention – but often get “distracted” and forget about them for weeks, or
even months! My advice to others is don’t
be like me!
How do you manage your “to-do” lists? Do
you use any special software to help you
out? I use a little program called “Cute Reminder,” which pops up little unobtrusive
message boxes on the right of my screen.
However, I do tend to keep putting jobs off
and so they build up & up until I may have
about 20 reminders pop up at once! I’m
nowhere near as organized as I should be.
Time management is one of the biggest
issues facing affiliates. What time management tips can you offer your fellow
webmasters? Don’t put off ANY job unless you really have to – or you’ll end up
as disorganized as I am!
You indicate in your GPWA profile that
you wish you could earn a living gambling. If you were earning a living gambling, what would you be betting on? I
don’t really know – probably sports and
horse racing. It would be very nice if
there really were a way to beat roulette,
too!
Who do you think is going to win the World
Cup this summer? England! (I’m a hopeless optimist.) Once, just for once, they are
going to play to their full potential.
If you could sit down to dinner with any
five people, living or dead, who would
they be, and why?
1. My dad (died in 2008) – because I never really talked to him enough before it
was too late.
2. My former brother-in-law (died in
2001, aged 40) – just because I miss
him a lot.
3. Freddie Mercury – his songs meant
SO much to me in my late teens/early
twenties.
If you had to pick five keys to success as an
affiliate, what would they be, and why?
1. Be a player first. Would you recommend a restaurant to someone if you
hadn’t dined there yourself first?
2. Listen and learn from existing affiliates. No one can just jump straight in
without some sort of guidance.
3. Do your homework on the sites you are
thinking about promoting. There are
many rogue casinos and affiliate programs out there – avoid at all costs.
4. Be patient. Rome was not built in a day,
and nor was any affiliate’s site. Expect
it to take at least a year before your
hard work is rewarded.
5. Be honest with the content of your site.
Don’t try to make something sound
better than it really is – most players
are pretty intelligent and will not be
fooled by BS.
If you were “stuck” in a city due to travel
restrictions, would you do everything
possible to get home? Or would you take
some time to go exploring? Do some exploring – looking for a fruit machine in
the nearest pub!
GPWA Affiliate Interview Series
54
Teo | casino2k.com
“When you find the GPWA, you’re
in the right place.”
How long have you been working in the
industry? More than two years. I started
the day after Christmas 2007.
What first drew you to the business? Like
every student without a full-time job, I
needed some “easy money.” I looked for
a good roulette strategy to win in online
casinos and I found a Web site explaining how to win thousands of dollars per
day, 100 percent guaranteed. I won about
$500 in two hours, then I lost $200 in one
second. I thought something was wrong
with that strategy, and after a few hours
I figured out this scammer was using the
“Martingale” betting system just to earn
commissions from players’ losses. That’s
how I discovered the affiliate world. I decided to make this world better.
What do you like about the industry? I
like gambling; it’s easy to develop and
write about something you like. The competition is now in SEO; I’m a professional
SEO consultant and I have an advantage
over some of the other affiliates. Last but
not least, gaming conferences are great;
you get to know hundreds of people and
you visit cool cities.
What don’t you like? I don’t like the unethical methods a lot of “webmasters”
use to get high positions in search engine
results and to earn money. In an ideal
world, such persons shouldn’t exist.
What surprised you most? The number of
online casinos opened over the last two
years. Every day I receive e-mails from
new operators to promote their brands.
I’ve been also surprised by the level of
competition in this market.
What is the current status of Italian efforts to regulate offshore online gaming? What is the latest information you have?
The Italian government is regulating online gaming sites for “fair gaming” pur-
GPWA Affiliate Interview Series
poses. They started with poker and sportsbooks, and now they’re also planning to
regulate bingo and casinos. I’m not aware
of any official timeline, but some say they
will sell licenses starting in September. It
seems they will sell licenses for hundreds
of thousands of euros and will tax affiliates and operators. I don’t think they care
very much about fair gaming, but I hope
regulation will clarify all the problems for
Italian affiliates.
What prompted you to join the GPWA,
and how has it helped you so far? After
the roulette scam, I learned I couldn’t
trust everyone. So I looked for information about an affiliate program I was
starting to work with and I found the
GPWA. At first the GPWA helped me to
choose which affiliate programs to trust.
Then I started participating in the forums
and I discovered how big and complex
this industry is. GPWA and private forums helped me to improve my marketing skills and, best of all, to get to know
some very good webmasters and make
some very good friends. To summarize
in a sentence: When you find the GPWA,
you’re in the right place.
What keywords do you find are bringing
people to your site? What kind of work
did you do to boost casino2k’s popularity in search engines? Until September
2009 my Web sites had a lot of visitors
from keywords like “free bonuses,” “free
games,” etc. Tons of visitors, no earnings.
Since October 2009 my rankings have
been boosted for the most competitive
keywords like “online casino,” “casino
bonus,” “games strategies,” etc. More
visitors, higher conversion rates, visitors
participating in discussion boards and
spending hours on the Web site. I focused
on SEO and decided to update my Web
site every day. I think Google has flagged
casino2k as an authority Web site and my
rankings (and earnings) have suddenly
improved.
One of your employees (Casino2k.Member) was recently approved as a GPWA
member. On his membership application
he indicated that his name was “John
Luke” but he introduced himself as “Stefano” on the message boards. Can you clarify this situation for everyone? His name
is not John Luke; he’s called Stefano. He
presented himself with another name for
anonymity because of the unclear law
regulating online gaming in Italy.
How do your family and friends feel about
how you make your living? My family
is not aware I own gambling Web sites.
Only a few people know about my life as
an affiliate and they have no problems
with that because they know I talk about
gambling in an ethical way.
Your GPWA profile lists you as a student.
Are you still attending university? If so,
do you plan to stay in the affiliate business once you are finished? I missed a
few exams needed to graduate, but I’m
spending 99 percent of the time working
so it’s difficult to complete them. I’ve also
opened an SEO agency because I feel the
affiliate world is very unstable; your earnings could suddenly drop. Anyway, I’ll try
to go on with both projects and, hopefully,
I’ll graduate too at some point!
How long do you give yourself for responding to e-mail? And what e-mail
management tips can you offer? I check
my e-mail every five minutes, but I respond immediately only to urgent e-mail.
Nonimportant e-mail is put on my to-do
list. Don’t waste time replying to spam
link exchange e-mail or to affiliate operators you don’t want to work with. Don’t
waste time with webmail: configure email clients like Thunderbird to manage
all your e-mail accounts.
How do you manage your “to-do” lists?
Do you use any special software to help
you out? I started with a plain text to-do
list using a simple text editor, then it suddenly reached about 100 entries and I decided to give up. Now I use a simple tool
for Linux (yeah, I’m a Linux geek) called
GToDo. It helps a lot with managing
55
Age: 28
Hometown: Milano, Italy
Currently residing in: Top Secret
Favorite food: Spaghetti alla carbonara
One book everyone must read:
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
Sites: www.casino2k.com and many others
tasks, priorities, timelines and it notifies
you when the task is due. Using a good todo list software application helps a lot in
improving productivity.
When you need to get as far away from
work as possible, where do you go? I go
fishing in small mountain creeks: nobody
around, no noise, just the sounds of nature.
Who do you think is going to win the
World Cup this summer? And why? I bet
€ 100 on Italy because I hope it happens,
and because the odds are really interesting. England has a good chance of winning; they’re very strong and they have
one of the best and smartest football
managers: Fabio Capello.
If you had to pick five keys to success as an
affiliate, what would they be, and why?
1. Do not copy; always write original and
useful content so your visitors will read it
and spend time on the Web site. Then they
will definitely come back and trust you.
2. Love your job, understand the gambling world, play and understand the
games, do it for fun and with passion
and you will achieve great results.
3. Never give up when confronted with
problems and loss of positions in search
results, traffic and earnings; try to understand the problems and fix them.
Only by facing up to problems can you
learn and improve your skills.
4. Analyze details. Never be satisfied with
what you have done. Study and analyze
everything on your Web site: taking
care of details can be crucial to success.
5. Outsource time-consuming tasks with
low value, and also look for good copywriters and organize their work.
If you could sit down to dinner with any
five people, living or dead, who would
they be, and why? I’d love to have a dinner with five fantastic girls, preferably
alive...just kidding lol. It would be interesting having a dinner with Nicole Kidman, just to check if she is as cute as I’ve
always seen in her movies; Gianni Agnelli, to talk about business and make money
with him; Plato, because you can’t avoid
talking about philosophy with a glass of
wine; Roberto Baggio, because he has
been one of the greatest soccer players in
the world; and Michael Schumacher, just
for driving me home after dinner.
If you were starring in a movie, who
would you want to play your romantic interest? The movie would be “Titanic,” and
for sure I’d perform better than Leonardo
DiCaprio. Who would I want with me? It
depends on how the dinner with Nicole
Kidman turns out....
If you were “stuck” in a city due to travel
restrictions, would you be the person who
did everything humanly possible to get
back home? Or would you be the person
who took some time to go exploring and
smell the flowers? I love traveling around
and I love adventures. Once when I was
in Venice with my girlfriend there was a
strike. We couldn’t find a cheap hotel so
we slept for two nights in a churchyard.
So romantic—except for the rats swimming in the Grand Canal and eating everything they could find!
What are three things that nobody knows
about you?
1. I’m an affiliate.
2. I never wake up before 11:30 a.m.
3. I’ve watched an Italian soap opera for
years. What a shame that only females
admit to watching it!
GPWA Affiliate Interview Series
56
Bjorn Bos | Madnesz
Forget about
casinos – forex is
where it’s at!
How long have you been working in the
industry? I started in the casino affiliate industry about four years ago. At the
time I was doing very well in online poker,
and spent quite a bit of time at a Dutch
poker forum. When I found out that the
owners of such Web sites were the biggest
winners of the emerging poker hype, I got
very interested in this money-making possibility and started to make plans for affiliate sites.
What do you like about the industry? The
very strong correlation between effort and
reward. The more time you put into your
Web sites, the bigger the rewards. Plus the
freedom to choose location and time to do
your work.
What don’t you like about the industry?
The unregulated environment. Because
of this, the casino operators still have ultimate power over their players. I’ve seen
the most ridiculous terms and conditions that do nothing but make the player
completely powerless in the case of any
disputes. Also, most players cannot go
to their local court to fight an operator’s
decision, since the practice of online gambling is illegal in many countries.
What surprised you most about the industry? How well organized and close this
industry really is. Most people are willing
to help each other, and a lot of knowledge
is shared freely among the affiliates. The
conferences are always a good place to
meet interesting people.
You have four sites dedicated to backgammon and one that provides information
on bonus offers for casino games. Why
so many backgammon sites? And where
does tommydanger fit into all of this?
During the poker boom, there was a lot of
buzz that backgammon could become the
GPWA Affiliate Interview Series
next big thing. I decided that I wanted to
be one of the first backgammon affiliates,
so that if it really became as big as poker,
I would be in the front row. After a while,
it became clear that backgammon did not
have a lot of growth potential and I started
to develop other Web sites. At first, I created some poker and casino subpages at
the backgammon Web site. Then I started working together with tommydanger
(Luuk Noordhoff), who is a good friend of
mine from university, and we developed a
casino Web site. After that, I started working on forex-related Web sites.
Dutch is your native language, yet you
operate English- and German-language
sites (in addition to a Dutch-language
site). How difficult is it to work on the nonDutch sites? Most of my Web sites are in
English. Since I’ve studied in English my
whole life, and since I spent four months
in South Africa, I am quite familiar with
the language. I can understand German
when reading, but I’m not able to write it.
For this I use freelancers.
You also operate a forex site and a crude
oil site. How are these sites performing for
you? I got in touch with the forex market
at one of the casino conferences and got
enthusiastic to start a financial site. I now
have seen the tremendous player value in
this industry, which is even bigger than the
casino industry. These Web sites currently
bring in most of the revenue for me.
What prompted you to join the GPWA, and
how has it helped you so far? The amount
of knowledge available at the forums.
Unfortunately, I still lack the time to get
actively involved in this community, but I
hope this will change when I graduate at
the end of this year.
You’ve said that attending CAC Amsterdam in 2007 increased your enthusiasm
for the industry. How did that conference
get you excited about being an affiliate?
Have you attended any conferences since
then? I’ve visited CAC three times, and
have attended both CAP Barcelona and
CAP Amsterdam one time. They always
are a great source of SEO knowledge and
the perfect place to get face time with your
affiliate manager. I also have to admit that
the parties account for a lot of the excitement!
How do your family and friends feel about
how you make your living? They are happy for me that I manage to earn a nice
extra buck during my time as a student,
and that I can do the work I like instead of
some shitty job at the gas station.
A couple of years ago (July 2008) you
posted that you believed that “the online
gambling market could die pretty soon.”
Do you still feel that way? The closure of
the U.S. market was a huge surprise to
many and we were pretty powerless. Fortunately there still was the EU market that
we all could turn to, but there are no guarantees that this will always be so. If the EU
decided to put an end to online gambling
in the same way the U.S. did, the market will be pretty dead. The opposite can
happen just as easily if the U.S. opens its
doors again, but no one can predict what
will really happen.
Time management is one of the biggest
issues facing affiliates. What time management tips can you offer your fellow
webmasters? And what are you studying
at university? I am studying industrial
engineering and management. I expect to
graduate at the end of this year, which will
open up a lot of time for me. Time management can be really simple: just make
effective use of your resources. Don’t forget that you can outsource almost anything to free up some time.
How long do you give yourself for responding to e-mail? And what e-mail management tips can you offer? Don’t forget
that at least 80 percent of the messages in
your inbox are nothing but time consumers. Choose to spend time on them wisely.
How much e-mail do you receive from new
online casinos that say they have the highest conversion, and that they want to work
together with you? Or automated e-mail
from webmasters who want to exchange
links? Although it is polite to answer each
one of them, most are just time consuming and can easily be ignored.
57
Age: 25
Hometown: Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Currently residing in: Amsterdam
Favorite food: Tortellini
One book everyone must read:
The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss
Sites: casinobonusking.com, backgammoninfo.net,
tradecrudeoil.net, forexcurrency.org
How do you manage your “to-do” lists? Do
you use any special software to help you
out? No. I am pretty chaotic in my way
of working. I prefer to work from a list of
work in my head, instead of written-down
“to-do” lists. The great advantage about
this way of working is that your mind
automatically prioritizes things. The first
“to-do” your mind is thinking of is often
the most important one.
Who do you think is going to win the
World Cup this summer? And why? Definitely Holland. It is about time we become
world champion! We often play the best
football during the tourney, but always
forget to take home the cup. Hopefully
things will be different this year.
If you could sit down to dinner with any
five people, living or dead, who would they
be, and why? Richard Branson is one of
my heroes. His autobiography Losing My
Virginity tells the whole story about this
self-made man, and shows the possibility
to both have great success in business and
have lots of fun meanwhile. During my
internship in South Africa I learned a lot
about the great accomplishments of Nelson Mandela, and what an amazing person he is, so I would definitely add him
to the dinner table. I also would love to
have some words with President Obama,
so he will be invited as well. The remaining spots I would fill with Charles Darwin
to hear about his great adventures, and
Jim Morrison from The Doors because I
love his music.
When you need to get as far away from
work as possible, where do you go? Never really thought about this question. I
think the best way to forget about work
and clear my mind for a moment is to do
sports. I like to play tennis, football or
squash; this is a great way to relax.
If you had to pick five keys to success as an
affiliate, what would they be, and why?
1. Creativity. Don’t just copy; think about
new ways to attract an audience. If you
get a great idea that is genuinely different from the rest, you could be sitting
on a pot of gold.
2. Dedication. Especially for new affiliates, be prepared to work hard for it
until things start to come together.
3. Get involved. Spend some time at
communities such as the GPWA. Every minute you put in will be returned
times two. Also try to attend a conference every now and then.
4. SEO knowledge. After all, we all try to
rank number one in Google.
5. Persistence. Don’t give up when things
do not seem to turn your way.
GPWA Affiliate Interview Series
58
Janet Brockert | Redbush54
“Always stay positive regardless
of how bad things may seem.”
How long have you been working in the
industry? What drew you to the business?
I’ve been in the industry for almost two
years. I found it interesting and liked the
possibility that I could work from home.
What surprised you most about the industry? I don’t know how programs such as
Grand Privé can say, “We don’t want you
anymore” and close affiliate programs.
Plus the cheating that casinos, etc., do by
manipulating payout percentages.
What did you do before you joined the
online gaming industry? For 20 years I
managed a bowling center. I finally decided that 70- to 80-hour work weeks
weren’t for me. I took about a month off
and went to work for a hospital in food
service. In October 2009 I quit that and
went to work full-time at GamTrak.
How long do you give yourself for responding to e-mail? And what e-mail
management tips can you offer? Since
I’m the point of call for GamTrak I try not
to let it get too full. Sometimes it can get
a little overwhelming but I usually make
myself sit down and don’t get up until everything has been taken care of.
How do you manage your “to-do” lists?
Do you use any special software to help
you out? Paper and pencil is the best I
can do and hope I don’t lose the paper.
How much time does it take to keep your
sites updated? Since I do the forum I feel
like it’s never updated. When I first started with GamTrak I thought we needed to
promote everybody and begged Robin to
let me sign us up. Now I’m paying for it.
What prompted you to join the GPWA,
and how has it helped you so far? Robin
encouraged me to join the forums to learn.
I really am a shy person and prefer to remain silent but I have found GPWA mem-
GPWA Affiliate Interview Series
bers to be very helpful when I’ve asked
questions. Plus I learn a lot about the industry just by reading the new posts daily.
You’ve been working with Robin at GamTrak for a year and a half. How is she to
work with? Don’t be afraid to tell us the
truth. She probably won’t even see this!
At first she had to be very patient because
I knew nothing. I would ask her over and
over how to do something, and each time
she would patiently answer. Now I feel
like I’ve grown enough that I can usually
handle something without even consulting with her.
Age: 55
Hometown: Basehor, Kansas
Currently residing in: Leavenworth, Kansas
Has your husband given in yet regarding
the “3MTA3” personalized plate for your
Chevy Cobalt? And what does “3MTA3”
mean? No, and all I’m going to say is
write that word down on a piece of paper
and then go hold it up in front of a mirror
and read what it says.
If you could sit down to dinner with any
five people, living or dead, who would
they be, and why? Oprah, Celine Dion,
Alicia Keys, Reba McEntire and Whoopi
Goldberg. I believe these women in their
lives have been to the bottom and risen
to the top.
If you had to pick five keys to success as an
affiliate, what would they be, and why?
1. Always stay positive, regardless of how
bad things may seem.
2. Be honest. I have always told the truth
even when it got me into trouble.
3. You’ve got to have goals.
4. Find what you need to do the job and
make it something you’re proud of.
5. Be committed. If you’re not 110 percent
committed then it isn’t going to work
and you might as well not even start.
What’s your favorite movie? “Sister Act”
or “Ghost.”
Favorite food: Steak
One book everyone must read:
Anything by Robin Cook
Sites: gamtrak.com, gamtrak.com/GamTrakForum
If you were starring in a movie, who would
you want to play your romantic interest?
Patrick Swayze.
If you were “stuck” in a city due to travel
restrictions, would you be the person
who did everything humanly possible to
get back home? Or would you be the person who took some time to go exploring
and smell the flowers? Oh no – I have got
to get home!!!!
What are three things that nobody knows
about you?
1. I’m obsessive compulsive.
2. I’m a perfectionist but haven’t quite
gotten there yet.
3. Hubby and I are preparing to sell everything and travel the U.S. via motorhome.
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60
WA L L O F
SHAME
by J. Todd,
Executive Director, APCW
I
f you know anything about American
sports, you know that baseball is often
called America’s pastime. But the true
passion of most sports fans in the United
States is American football, specifically
the National Football League.
succeeded in blocking Delaware from allowing single-game wagering on sports.
You see, Delaware is one of just four states
where sports betting isn’t illegal. Under a
1992 law, states can allow sports betting if
The NFL makes millions of dollars every year. Sure, some of
that money comes from ticket
revenues, concession sales and
merchandising. But the bulk
of that money comes from TV
contracts. Lots of people watch
NFL games. Some are watching
because their favorite team is
playing. But there’s also a huge
group of people watching because they’ve got money riding
on the outcome.
Delaware appealed to the Supreme Court, but in early May,
the court announced that it was
siding with the NFL and the
rest of the frauds who are raking in the profits from the interest gambling creates in their
games, but decrying the practice as “tainting the game.”
More money changes hands
(from fantasy leagues, threeteam parlays and traditional
old straight wagers) based on
the results of NFL contests than
any other league in the United
States. More than $90 million
is wagered on the Super Bowl—
just one game—every year.
You would think that the NFL
would welcome a regulated
sports betting environment to
ensure the integrity of its contests. This is a league, after all,
that started producing injury
reports so that Las Vegas sports
books could produce an accurate line for
each game. But no, these hypocritical
jackasses have done everything in their
power to block the expansion of regulated
sports betting. The NFL has led the professional sports leagues’ crusade against
online sports books, and now, they’ve
APCW’s Wall of Shame
Surprise, surprise, the NFL and the rest of
the professional sports leagues cried foul.
They sought an injunction to stop the
state, and when they lost, they cried all
the way to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, where they won an
injunction to stop single-game
wagering. (The court did listen
to some reason; parlay betting
was allowed as the court ruled
that Delaware could resume
the same betting scheme it had
in 1976.)
So congratulations, NFL. Your
shameless contradictory stance
on sports betting wins you a
spot on the Wall of Shame. No
doubt your love of money would
have you looking to sign an exclusive endorsement deal with
an online sports book if the federal government ever decided
to regulate the industry.
they did so between 1976 and 1990 (only
Delaware, Nevada, Oregon and Montana
did so). Delaware offered parlay bets on
sports in 1976, and the state’s governor,
Jack Markell, decided to open up sports
betting to raise revenue and close a budget gap last year.
61
Previous Inductees:
John Kyl
Christel Schaldemose
The junior senator from Arizona’s support of
the UIGEA would be worthy of a Wall of Shame
nomination on its own merits. But Kyl’s appearance
on the Wall of Shame didn’t actually occur until he put
a hold on several Treasury Department nominees in
retaliation for the Obama administration’s decision
to delay implementation of the law, putting his own
selfish political concerns ahead of the needs of the
country.
This Danish European Parliament member is
chiefly responsible for the European Parliament voting — yes it was non-binding, but still
— 544-36 in favor of a report that would block
the formation of a single market for online gambling in the EU. Almost as bad as the vote was
the rampant hypocrisy that ran through the bill.
Betting on sports was really bad, unless you did
it through a government-run monopoly so the
state could get the revenue, in case it was really
good. Sheesh. Make up your mind.
Grand Prive Casino Group
Talk about larceny. This group deserves jeers after
shutting down its affiliate program and eliminating
affiliate commissions back in 2008 while keeping
its online casinos open for business. Efforts were
made by the GPWA and others to work with Grand
Prive and get it to make good on its non-payments to
affiliates, but nothing has worked as of yet.
Russ Hamilton
The former World Series of Poker Main Event champ
allegedly profited big time from the “superuser”
scandal at UltimateBet. That scandal, chronicled by
the TV newsmagazine “60 Minutes,” allowed certain
users to see the hole cards of players at the table. And
it gave online poker a black eye when it least needed
one.
Steve Beshear
The governor of Kentucky decided he could play
moralist for the world when he tried to seize 141
online gambling domains because they were
“illegal gambling devices.” Apparently, as long as
his precious Kentuckians were protected from the
“evils” of online gambling, he didn’t care that the
millions of people out there who wanted to enjoy a
legal pastime without interference might be unable
to access their accounts and games.
Spencer Bachus
The reflexively anti-online gambling Congressman
from Alabama said in a hearing this year that “McGill
University found that one-third of college students who
gamble on the Internet ultimately attempted suicide.”
Err, one problem, Congressman. “This assertion,
which is reportedly based upon our empirical research,
is not predicated upon any factual evidence,” said
McGill gambling and addiction researcher Jeffrey L.
Derevensky.
Steven Conroy
The Minister for Broadband, Communications and
the Digital Economy in Australia compiled a list of
“black list” Web sites last year that the country’s
ISPs would be required to block from its residents.
The list was supposed to be filled with sites related
to child porn, child abuse, rape and bestiality, but
when it was leaked it also included the home pages
of dating services, medical practitioners, private
companies and – you guessed it – at least 13 poker
sites, including Full Tilt, PokerStars and Absolute
Poker.
John Kindt
Kindt, a professor at the University of Illinois, was
quoted last year with a number of attacks on the
gambling industry, including statements such as
“widespread gambling gambles with our national
security by dragging down our national economic
security” and “(online gambling) would set us up
for something worse than the sub-prime mortgage
disaster.”
Southern District of New York
In June of 2009, the SDNY ordered the seizure of
$33 million from two payment processors, including
Account Services. Then it indicted Douglas Rennick
on conspiracy charges for bank fraud, money
laundering and operating an illegal gambling
business for allegedly processing payments for online
casinos and poker rooms with Account Services.
Nick Xenophon
At a December 2009 public hearing held by the
Productivity Commission in Sydney to discuss the
state of gambling in Australia, MP Xenophon said
that Australian players who drain their accounts
when playing at “illegal online gambling sites”
should have the “right” to ask their bank to void their
financial transactions.
APCW’s Wall of Shame
62
MEET THE
AFFILIATE
MANAGERS
This issue’s interviewees care deeply about our industry and are doing their bit to make it work
better for all of us. AffiliateWIDE’s Steve Rubin wants to weed out all the “nitwits.” Sarah Psaila
of betsafe hopes to see a change in the negative feelings certain countries have about
online gaming. Industry veteran Aaron O’Sullivan from Jackpot Games is obsessed with
finding better ways to identify and eliminate spammers – and he also owns a castle.
Should you be doing business with any of these people? After you read
what they have to say, we think you’ll be ready to give it a go!
STEVE RUBIN | AffiliateWIDE
AffiliateWIDE represents two
brands – Black Diamond Casino
and Box 24 Casino. Both brands
are standalone casinos. What
are the advantages of promoting standalone casinos for affiliates? What challenges do you
face in not offering poker, sportsbooks and bingo, like some other
brands do? In an industry with so
many different markets and targeted traffic, it only makes sense
that both affiliates and operators
attempt to conquer a particular
niche before taking on
too many directions at
once. I have never been
an affiliate – nor do I
plan to jump down that
road – however, with all
the people competing
for traffic, making yourself established within
one target market is
definitely the best way,
professionally speaking,
to prepare yourself for
the long run as you will
then be more adept in
the future at approaching a new sector within
this business.
“I would love to
have affiliates,
players and
operators
keeping each
other informed
so nothing slips
through the
cracks. It would
also be great if
the nitwits in
this business
would stop
making all of
our lives more
difficult.”
In terms of challenges
facing us, I look at it as
the exact opposite, really.
By not focusing on poker
or sports betting, we have
been able to go full speed
into the casino market
without having to set
unrealistic goals for ourselves. AffiliateWIDE is
Affiliate Manager Interview Series
a family-sized operation with all the
tools and expertise to position itself
as a prime choice for casino traffic
and we are in this for the long haul.
Should the time be right to delve into
other projects, we will not miss that
opportunity. For now, though, we
have a set goal before we can move
on to the next phase.
What distinguishes your two casinos from other casinos in the
market? What makes them different and unique in comparison to
other casinos powered by Rival
software? I think Box24 and Black
Diamond stand out in particular
due to the way in which the ownership plays such an active role
in both player communication
and satisfaction. The owner of
these brands has a 24-hour role
in what is happening from the top
down in terms of his staff making
sure players are never getting the
short end of the stick. The word
“vacation” is not a part of his vocabulary, and as a result I think
the players can feel the hands-on
role of the operator himself.
AffiliateWIDE’s brands run everything completely in house: support, processing, retention, etc.
Up to date, we are the LARGEST,
NON WHITE LABEL, Rival-powered group. As an affiliate it only
seems logical to promote this type
of program – assuming the affiliate focuses on the type of traffic to
which we cater. Once we launch
Spartan Slots Casino, there will
be no question about the direction in which we are headed and
how we should effectively be able
to monopolize the Rival market.
Earlier this year, Rival decided to
charge affiliates when their players played progressives and pass
on losses from MasterCard processing issues to affiliates. But
AffiliateWIDE announced Box 24
would absorb the MasterCard
charges and NOT charge affiliates
for progressive play. Why did you
make these decisions? Why were
you able to split with Rival here?
And why did you choose to move
Black Diamond to Rival? Eating
the MasterCard charges was an
easy decision even though it was
a huge financial loss to the company. However, this is something
we had prepared for awhile back,
knowing that something like this
is never too far away. Simply put,
there is no reason for affiliates to
get shafted for business established between the processing
companies and the operators.
That would be like employees of
AffiliateWIDE having to chip in
some of their wages because of
damages to Wael’s [the casino
owner’s] car! This along with the
decision not to charge for progressive play was a no brainer,
and Rival knows that we are completely in control of all of our own
company matters, except when
it comes to issues regarding the
software itself. Rival allows operators to set their own business
terms and structure; so for us, it
makes sense to handle the progressive issue in line with the
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63
other leading software providers in the
industry. The decision to move to Rival
was a simple one. Based on our reputation within the Rival community and the
future we saw to really exploit that market, we figured having a completely Rival based program with multiple brands
would allow us to compete better with the
biggest RTG and Vegas Tech affiliate programs. Within the U.S. market especially,
players are still waiting for a prime casino
group offering another strong option besides the RTG and Vegas Tech groups that
have been in the market for years.
What are three things every affiliate needs
to know about AffiliateWIDE?
1. We are in this for years to come, and going about business in only the most ethical
manner is the way to ensure this future.
2. Affiliates are ALWAYS paid on the first
of each month.
3. You will earn with AffiliateWIDE –
whether you want to or not!
What do you think the three greatest challenges facing the industry are right now?
And what would you do to solve them?
Obviously, across the industry, the long
arms of various governments are always
complicating matters and this has a HUGE
range of effects, the least of which is the
ability for players to even have a chance
at getting their deposits through. On the
other side, we are not helped by some of
the nearsighted and inexperienced operators who have compromised the reputations of some top-notch programs.
In terms of solving these problems, I think
we just need to give a good shake to some
of these heavily lobbied politicians who
prefer to cater to moneyed special interests rather than listen to the voices of the
people they are representing.
I also propose a “decency and competency” test to be administered to anyone
wanting to become an operator so that
we can weed out all the dopes who have
managed to get gaming licenses. Maybe
GPWA wants to partake in this!
What steps do you take to stop the spamming? Spamming is not completely eradicable but the deactivation of accounts definitely helps. A simple “Stop spamming or
else” e-mail usually does the trick, and if
not – see ya!
One way to keep affiliates happy is to pay
them on time. What steps has your program taken to ensure that they’ll be paid
on time? And when do your payments go
out? All payments are processed on the
first of each month and within a few days
of that, all affiliates have usually received
their commission (obviously wire transfers take a few days to arrive). You can refer to the “Affiliate Payments” section of
GPWA and other forums to verify this.
When the clock hits 00:00 on the first, we
are already starting to process payments;
hence the 8 a.m. confirmation of funds received by affiliates.
How long do you give yourself for responding to e-mail? And what e-mail
management tips can you offer? Now
with everyone getting mail on their mobile
phones, rapid e-mail conversations are always taking place. If I am not sleeping, I
usually answer within a few minutes – although I do find myself on my Blackberry
in my dreams, which is very creepy. In
terms of e-mail management – ANSWER
them! To affiliates specifically: we know
you get tons of e-mail a day, but please,
Affiliate Manager Interview Series
64
ContinueD from page 63
even if you are not interested, just give
a three-word response so we don’t have
to keep bombarding you. “I’m not interested” usually works.
gone. The only time I will make a bet is
with friends over college football – and of
course during March Madness; but that
is not really gambling, is it?
How do you manage your “to-do” lists? Do
you use any special software to help you
out? I stick to Post-its and notepads and
there is no better software than a ballpoint pen! Seriously, I don’t know how I
work in this business as I am a technologically illiterate mutt.
What advice do you have for someone
just starting in the industry? Understand
the players. From there, you can work
in nearly every field associated within
the business itself. Also, there should be
a manual for abbreviations – I still find
myself asking affiliates to what they are
referring when they give me a three-letter
abbreviation!
We discovered you are a graduate of
the University of Oregon, where you
majored in journalism. So how did a
good Duck like you end up moving
into the online gambling industry?
Do you miss being on the radio (and
if so, what do you miss most about
it?)? And why did you move to Israel?
I decided to move to Israel after college because I needed to shake some
things up in my life and wanted to
join the Israeli Army as the first step
into integrating myself into Israeli
society. Sports journalism is still
my passion and someday I intend
to have my own sports radio show,
but for now, getting my Master’s degree is my main priority. Never did I
imagine that I would be working in
the online gaming industry; however,
I needed some shift work to complement my time as a student and as a
result fell into the customer support
team of a competitor. From there I
moved into affiliates before taking
the job at AffiliateWIDE to head up
the program here. Being an affiliate
manager is the best job for a Master’s
student, as dealing with affiliates can
be done 24 hours throughout the day.
This is a job where set hours do not make
sense – it is definitely better to be flexible throughout the day, night and early
morning hours!
Do you gamble yourself? If so, what
games do you like to play? Were you an
online player before getting into the industry? In high school, after seeing the
film “Rounders,” I developed a minor
poker addiction that showed itself in the
school cafeteria, but those days are long
Affiliate Manager Interview Series
some time, and mixed with their grouping, it seems like a winning combination
to make a run for it.
What is the last book you read? Did you
enjoy it? Why or why not? The last book
I read was Uneasy Lies the Head, the autobiography of the late King Hussein of
Jordan. It is definitely a fascinating book,
and anyone who is interested in trying to
understand Middle East politics has to
read it.
What is your favorite movie? And
why? I am not a movie buff, but I
would have to say “City of God.” It is
congruent with my obsession about
Brazil.
If you had a theme song, what would
it be? “I’ll Make Love to You,” by
Boyz II Men. Let’s not go down that
road…
If you could change one thing about
the online gaming industry, what
would it be? I would love to have
affiliates, players and operators all
communicating equally and keeping
each other informed so nothing slips
through the cracks. It would also be
great if the nitwits in this business
would stop making all of our lives
more difficult – that goes for all sides
of the spectrum.
If you were at a bar with an unlimited budget, what would be your drink of choice?
I would be drinking beer and chasing it
with Arak. For those of you who don’t
know what Arak is, let me know and I will
send you a bottle. Pure joy in a bottle –
and at a price that won’t break the bank.
Who do you think is going to win the
World Cup this summer? I would love to
see a team from Africa take it, but I do not
think this is the year. Spain’s time has finally arrived. This is definitely the finest
team the Spaniards have put together in
If someone is visiting you, what’s the
one place you have to take them to
see? I am definitely taking them into
the middle of the Negev desert in
Southern Israel. I think every person
at some points needs to feel like he or she
is the only being left in the world; parts
of the Negev will definitely get you there!
What are three things that no one knows
about you?
1. I played the violin for 10 years.
2. I did standup comedy in college and
got booed of the stage.
3. I was arrested six times before the
age of 21 – everything was expunged,
though!
Due to space constraints, we could not print the interview in its entirety. The complete text will be posted at gpwa.org.
“The whole show was
awesome and possibly
the best I have been to.
Best layout and venue
to date and the parties
were great.”
Come to Budapest to work hard and play harder.
For more information email [email protected]
66
SARAH PSAILA | Betsafe
Right now, the first thing people
see when they visit the Betsafe
Web site is a promotion for “The
Recruiter.” What is “The Recruiter”? How long is this promotion
available? The Recruiter is a
competition initiated by Betsafe.
com which can be compared to an
extremely well developed refer-afriend program. Customers earn
points when their friends sign up
with Betsafe. Points then determine one’s placement on the leader boards where a total prize pool
of €350,000 is up for grabs. The
best Recruiter will drive off from
this competition with a brandnew Porsche! Henrik Person, our
CEO, is the mastermind behind
this promo, which will
run till the end of July.
“At Betsafe we
pride ourselves
on being a
company that
maintains
close contact
with customers
and business
partners alike.”
In terms of the size of
business, how do the
poker and casino units
compare to the sports
betting at Betsafe? I
must admit that things
at Betsafe over the past
year have gone from
strength to strength.
We are a sportsbook renowned for having one
of the strongest offerings in the industry for
the markets we target,
and our poker and casino products have grown at an astronomical rate. Since moving to Ongame
early last year we have managed
to establish ourselves as one of
the most promising rooms in the
Ongame network and we continue to exceed all expectations both
internally and externally. Our casino has also enjoyed exceptional
success, and we now look forward
to launching our second casino
at the end of May. Launching a
crypto casino along with our current portfolio from NetEnt will
definitely give us that additional
edge and help ensure we have one
of the strongest casino products
in the industry.
Affiliate Manager Interview Series
What percentage of your sports
betting customers cross over to
poker and casino? What about the
other direction? Do poker players become sports bettors? What
about casino customers? As in any
other business cross-selling plays
an important strategic role here
at Betsafe. We feel (and our stats
prove) that we are in an advantageous position in terms of crosssell as well given that we have
such a strong and unique sportsbook product. This in turn makes
cross-selling somewhat easier
given that experience shows that
it is far easier to encourage crosssell from sportsbook to poker and
casino rather than vice versa.
What differentiates the Betsafe
affiliate program from other affiliate programs? At Betsafe we pride
ourselves on being a company
that maintains close contact with
customers and business partners
alike. In the Betsafe affiliate program, the dedicated affiliate management and efforts made to help
our affiliates at an individual level
are key differentiating factors.
That said, we do have a number of
additional very exciting projects
and propositions related to our affiliate program in the pipeline that
will help us further stand out in
the crowd, but the details here are
for me to know – and for the rest
of you to find out very shortly!
In your FAQ, you clearly state that
Betsafe does not tolerate spamming. If Betsafe discovers someone is spamming to promote Betsafe, what steps will be taken to
stop the spamming? In adhering
to company policy we do monitor
our affiliates’ activity and strive to
protect the brand at all costs. Understandably our affiliates need
flexibility to promote us but we do
make every effort to ensure that
the Betsafe brand is safeguarded
at all times. Solid relationships
with our affiliates put us in a position to be able to contact any
affiliate should any problem like
this arise, have an open discussion and discuss the best way forward, one that will be mutually
beneficial to both parties.
How long do you give yourself for
responding to e-mail? And what
e-mail management tips can you
offer? I’d like to think that my
response time to e-mail is not
significantly lagged, and while
I do have to prioritize certain email, I do make it a point not to
leave people waiting for a reply
for more than 24 hours. Sometimes answers can’t be given but
an acknowledgment within 24
hours is essential good-business
practice. The key here is organization! Understanding my business priorities and organizing my
inbox accordingly definitely helps
me get through my inbox more
efficiently answering what needs
to be answered and delegating
and following up others...rules set
up on the basis of these priorities
always help, especially when you
are faced with over 200 e-mails
after a day or two on leave!
In your mind, what’s more difficult, attracting players or retaining them? I would have to say
retention! Attracting players is
understandably important; however, extending CLTV [combined
loan to value] is where both affiliates and operator can really cash
in. Acquisition is significantly
more expensive than retention,
especially when one considers the
extortionate costs incurred when
employing mass-marketing techniques, which are essential for
brand-building and acquisition
efforts. But if the budget is available increased acquisition stats
are easier to achieve. Retention
on the other hand requires far
more intellectual resources and
strategic thinking, but is what will
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67
really allow for long-term profitability and
mutually beneficial partnerships.
How can affiliates help in retaining
players? I very much see it as being a joint
effort between affiliates and operators.
Affiliates need to ensure what they promise
their players or subaffiliates is manageable
by the operator, while the operator needs
to ensure that the CRM strategy employed
is efficient and effective in helping affiliates
understand their differentiated player
base so that they may target and achieve
results accordingly. Affiliates can also
contribute to the operator’s understanding
of their respective player profiles,
allowing the operator to manage players
in the most effective way possible. Sound
communication with all parties is key!
Most of the affiliate managers we talk to
say building trust with their affiliates is
critical to success. How do you go about
building trust with your affiliates? Having
a transparent program with reliable stats
and a strong, dedicated affiliate team behind the scenes are in my opinion the key
ingredients. Clearly communicated terms
and conditions that are adhered to are also
important if you want to build solid longterm relationships with your partners!
Besides trust, what are the keys to building successful relationships between affiliates and affiliate programs? Trust is a
major factor as I previously pointed out,
but to build this trust one needs to ensure
efficient internal and external channels of
communication, operational transparency
and an affiliate team that takes the time to
listen and understand the current and future needs of affiliates and their respective
player bases.
What are the three most important attributes an affiliate manager must have in
order to be successful? Persistence, determination and the ability to work hard and
party harder!
How long have you been in the online
gambling industry? Why did you decide
to enter the field? I actually started working in gaming three years ago as an ac-
count manager at NetRefer. Prior to that I
was interested in the field and related my
Marketing Master’s studies to the online
gambling industry with a specialization in
affiliate marketing.
Rumor has it that you love Malta. Did you
grow up there? What does the world need
to know and understand about Malta
– and your love for Malta? I am Maltese
born and bred. I grew up there most of
my life but I did spend quite a few years
studying in England. First things first:
Yes, it exists; no, it’s not part of Italy; yes,
the Internet has finally arrived; and no,
we aren’t all related! LOL. But seriously,
Malta is a great place to be...its climate,
rich historical background, friendly people and overall relaxed atmosphere make
it an ideal home or place to visit!
Where have you lived in Europe? What
were your favorite things about the places
you lived? How did those places compare
to Malta? England and Sweden – both
places proved to be a great experience.
Living on an island sometimes tends to
lead to quite a narrow mind frame. Getting away helped broaden my perspective,
and ensured I came to understand that
there is a lot more to life than the sun the
sea and partying in Paceville!
Time to represent the Scorpios. What is
great about being a Scorpio? What doesn’t
the world understand about Scorpios? I’m
not one to go by the books when it comes
to horoscopes... I do read them ... but only
believe them when it pays me to do so – so
I won’t comment much here!
Do you gamble yourself? If so, what games
do you like to play? Were you an online
player before getting into the industry?
I’m not much of a gambler myself...my
last trip to Vegas was spent in the shopping mall at Caesars Palace, which goes to
prove this all too well!! I obviously make it
a point to understand the products we offer and the psychology behind the players
and the games... but as for money spent
online... it’s shopping rather than gambling that drains my bank account!
What advice do you have for someone just
starting in the industry? Don’t let anyone
or anything knock you down...hard work
and perseverance pay off in the long run!
If you could have dinner with three other
people, living or dead, who would they be
and why? Jesus Christ – Have a few question here I need to ask the big guy!! Sigmund Freud – Think it’s high time someone analyzed him rather than vice versa!!
Marc Jacobs – I need a new bag!
What’s the best movie food? And why?
Chocolate. I’m a woman – chocolate is the
answer to all my problems and the ideal
food for any situation!
What is the last book you read? Did you
enjoy it? It was an academic book read in
preparation for my post graduation viva
– I enjoyed the fact that it backed up my
research findings, but to be totally honest there are far more interesting books I
would have rather read.
What is your favorite movie? And why?
This very much depends on my mood... it
could be a chick flick one day and an action-packed thriller another...but “The
Godfather” is a movie that has passed the
test of time and remains on my hit list...
that and all other Al Pacino movies!
If you had a theme song, what would it be?
And why? “These Are the Days Worth Living.” I may not always relate to the lyrics
but that song always helps me recharge,
refocus and get right back in the game!
If you could change one thing about the
online gaming industry, what would it be?
I think it would have to be the reputation
it has in some countries.
If someone is visiting you, what’s the one
place you have to take them to see? Given
Malta’s size, I’d take them to see the whole
place ... in less than three hours!!!
Affiliate Manager Interview Series
68
AARON O’SULLIVAN | Jackpot Games
You’re a serious veteran of the
industry. What makes Jackpot
Games different? To start it’s
backed by a leading European
parent company with more than a
decade of experience in live video
and mobile solutions, including a
unique smartphone casino product and a Sky channel. We feel like
we have the best of both worlds:
some fresh and truly different
ideas from the parent company,
together with a team of experienced gaming industry professionals who, while embracing the
fresh approach, are able to avoid
the mistakes often made by new
outfits trying their hand at the
gaming industry for the
first time.
“Experience
has taught me
that affiliate
marketing is
about trust,
transparency
and personal,
flexible business
relationships.”
With the affiliate program, it’s a little more
traditional but with a
few personal touches
that I wanted to adopt
on taking the role. Experience has taught me
that affiliate marketing
is about trust, transparency and personal, flexible business relationships. So I made sure
that the program uses
a recognized, trusted
platform (provided by
NetRefer) that is able to
adapt to the requirements of different affiliates. It is that level of
flexibility in the program that, in
my opinion, separates us from our
competitors.
In terms of transparency: the program has no inactivity clauses, and
it has realistic commission tiers
that go up to 40 percent. And the
best part is that you don’t need to
have net revenue figures of £15k
to breach that second level percentage figure! Naturally, it’s only
fair that affiliates can contact the
team for a complete breakdown of
their earnings, too.
Affiliate Manager Interview Series
Golden Derby is one of the more
popular games at Jackpot Games.
What is Golden Derby? And why
do you think it is so popular?
Golden Derby is Jackpot Games’
virtual horseracing game. I think
the answer lies in the game’s
graphics, which really are firstclass. Combined with a simple
betting slip, generous odds and
enough detail for even the most
ardent racing punter, and it all
makes Golden Derby top gambling entertainment.
Jackpot Games is currently a nodownload casino. Are there any
challenges in getting people to
play at no-download casinos that
other properties don’t face? Or is
it easier to get players if they don’t
have to download something?
The traditional view is that the
casual player will convert more
readily and play more if the games
are available instantly, whereas
the more serious, dedicated casino player prefers downloads
and the better graphics associated
with them. In regard to the latter point, I don’t think this is the
case. I believe it’s simply because
instant play games haven’t had a
dedicated casino home and, up
until now, have been promoted as
additional options for players on
sportsbooks or poker sites. Also,
with ever-improving Flash technology there is no compromise
in game quality between instant
and download versions, and with
high-speed Internet bandwidth
now available to the majority of
players around the world, there
is little or no lag between clicking
and playing a Flash-based game.
At Jackpot Games we will be offering the full casino service with all
the benefits of instant-play games.
To give the user maximum choice
we’re also looking at a downloadable version of the casino in the
very near future. Yes, that was
blatant product promotion!
If Jackpot Games discovers someone is spamming to promote
Jackpot Games, what steps will
be taken to stop the spamming?
E-mail marketing is an accepted
part of the affiliate industry, but
there is absolutely no place for
spammers at Jackpot Games. We
will suspend payment and ultimately ban those who conduct
unethical e-mail marketing campaigns, as is stressed in our terms
and conditions.
One way to keep affiliates happy
is to pay them on time. What steps
has your program taken to ensure that they’ll be paid on time?
And when do your payments go
out? We have accounts with major payment gateways, including
Moneybookers and Neteller, and
we’re always looking to increase
our e-wallet solutions. We also
have traditional banking solutions
through wire transfers. However,
the importance with which we regard affiliate and player payments
can be best judged by our parent
company’s acquisition of Yes Payments, a fast-growing Internet
Payment Service Provider that is
targeting the global market. This
will provide Jackpot Games with
a unique platform to offer reliable
and quick payments, and allow
us to pass on savings to affiliates
and players. We pay affiliates in
full within seven working days of
a new calendar month.
How long do you give yourself for
responding to e-mail? And what
e-mail management tips can you
offer? I make responding to affiliates my top priority and will work
throughout the day on replying if
need be, with the exception of the
period around payments. Normally affiliates don’t mind a short
delay then.
As for e-mail management: the
best tip I can offer is to set up fold-
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69
ers and automatic rules so that certain email instantly populates in logical locations
in your inbox. It allows you to find certain
messages easily and separates the internal
e-mail from the external.
In your mind, what’s more difficult, attracting players or retaining them? As a relatively new casino the biggest challenge is
recruitment. The challenge lies in building
recognition of the brand and positive responses to it. With the latter we’ve already
seen a great deal of success; the former
will come with time and investment.
What advice do you have for someone just
starting in the industry? Understand the
industry; ask questions and learn as much
as you can from everyone. Having an understanding of affiliates, SEO, customer
relationship marketing, security issues,
payments and so on will allow you to empathize with affiliates, affiliate managers
and the casino staff generally, and allow
you to make faster, better and more confident decisions.
People in the online gambling industry
have been known to party. What’s your
best party story? Of the stories I can tell
without totally disgracing myself the
best one would be the time I’d had a few
beers and invited the whole bar back to
my locked hotel swimming pool at 3 a.m.
I was caught by security guards after 15
very fun minutes in the pool – after all
I had nowhere to run to as I was staying
there. I denied everything (I’ve seen the
cop shows!) until they showed me frighteningly clear CCTV footage of me running
around in my underwear.
If you were at a bar with an unlimited budget, what would be your drink of choice?
And why? Ahhh, so many to choose from. I
guess it would be Highland Park whisky...
but then I like a Hendrick’s gin and tonic...
and of course there’s Bollinger.
Who do you think is going to win the
World Cup this summer? And why? Spain.
They’re playing the best football in the
world at the moment, and given they won
the Euro Championships they may have
lost their penchant for bottling it at the big
events. Naturally, I’d like to say England
but I don’t think we’re quite there – they’re
within a reasonable shout, though.
If someone is visiting you, what’s the one
place you have to take them to see? Well,
I’ve only just moved to Malta, but from
what I’ve discovered of the place it would
have to be Mdina – the original walled
fifteenth-century capital in the center of
Malta that has barely changed. What could
be better than a place with great views and
superb little restaurants in a setting of real
atmosphere?
What are three things that no one knows
about you? Three things?! I’m a pretty
open person...er...right:
1. I own a castle...okay, it’s ruined and
shared amongst 300 or so other
O’Sullivans, but it still counts, I reckon.
2. I’m a glider pilot.
3. I support Norwich City Football Club.
Not a massive secret but I’m sure most
people reading this didn’t know that.
Affiliate Manager Interview Series
70
NEWS ANALYSIS
France and the U.K. take a second look
at their gambling laws
T
he legal landscape for online gambling in Europe is changing quickly, and nowhere are the changes
more dramatic than in two of Europe’s
largest markets – France and the U.K.
GPWA Times Managing Editor Vin Narayanan has been tracking the changes, and
takes a closer look at what’s happening in
each market.
The Canal+ Group has about 12.5 million
subscribers to its TV channels, including
10.8 million subscribers in France. Among
the popular Canal+ channels are Canal+
and Canal+Sport. Ladbrokes is supplying
the gambling expertise and technology for
the joint venture. CANAL is providing the
Canal+ brand, access to Canal+ customers
and its expertise in operating in France.
FRANCE
“Canal+ is a brand that is synonymous
with sport in France,” said John O’Reilly,
Ladbrokes’ managing director of remote
betting and gaming. “We believe that
there is an opportunity to build a good
business in France over time as the market and regulation develop.”
This summer, in time for the World Cup,
France is expected to “liberalize” its online
gambling laws and allow non-French operators the opportunity to offer their services in the second-most populous country in the EU.
For decades, Française des jeux (FDJ) and
Pari mutuel urbain (PMU) controlled the
gambling market in France. FDJ handled
the lotteries side and PMU handled horse
race betting. But under pressure from the
European Commission, France began the
process of revising its gambling laws last
year.
France’s new gambling law allows operators to apply for licenses to provide online
sports betting and online poker. Online
casinos are not allowed. As of press time,
the final regulations for the law had not
been released. But that hasn’t stopped
several of the industry’s largest operators
from striking deals to enter the French
market. And it hasn’t stopped top industry watchdogs from stating their concerns
about the new legislation.
Ladbrokes, which operates Ladbrokes.
com and more than 2,700 betting shops
in the U.K., Ireland, Belgium and Spain,
is launching a joint venture with Groupe
CANAL+ – France’s top pay TV provider –
that will provide an online betting service
that is licensed and regulated in France.
“Ladbrokes is one of the world’s leading
bookmakers with a strong heritage in this
sector,” added Groupe CANAL+ President
Bertrand Meheut when the joint venture was announced. “We look forward
to working with Ladbrokes to establish
one of the leading betting businesses in
France.”
Other sportsbooks are jumping into the
lucrative French market as well. Sportingbet has inked a two-year deal with
the Internet version of France’s national
paper, Le Monde, which allows Sportingbet to offer a co-branded sportsbook to
French customers that is accessible from
the sports page on Le Monde’s Web site,
lemonde.fr/sport.
Bwin, which pulled out of France in 2006
when two of its executives were arrested
there, is creating a sportsbook for France
as part of a joint venture with L’Équipe,
France’s national sports newspaper.
And anticipating competition from the
opening of the market, PMU has partnered with Paddy Power to get spread betting prices.
France and the U.K take a second look at their gambling laws
Paddy Power isn’t the only online gaming
firm PMU is partnering with. PMU is also
working with PartyPoker to offer online poker. In addition to PartyPoker’s new Frenchlanguage site, PartyPoker.fr, PartyGaming
also is providing white label poker rooms for
the AB Groupe and PMU. Players from all
three sites will create PartyPoker’s French
player pool. The AB Groupe has about 50
million paid subscribers to 15 TV channels,
and is expected to provide some marketing
muscle for the new venture.
Like PMU, FDJ, the other half of what
will soon be the former French gambling
monopoly, has been hard at work trying to
protect its market position.
FDJ bought Laverock Von Schoultz (LVS),
a London-based software provider known
for its sports betting technology. In addition to offering sports betting, FDJ is
partnering with the Barrière Casino to offer online poker. Barrière, which operates
38 land-based casinos in France, Switzerland, Egypt and France, also runs the 3D
online casino Le Croupier.
And in an effort to get its new offerings in
front of as many eyeballs as possible, FDJ
has signed a deal with mobile phone and
telecom provider Orange to put FDJ online gambling options on Orange’s French
portals.
FDJ has also reached an agreement with
TF1, France’s top TV broadcaster. The
partnership calls for TF1 to provide a
games area on the TF1.fr Web site that
offers FDJ sports betting, poker and lottery games. It also provides opportunities
for FDJ to sponsor TV shows that could
be related to their products, like a World
Cup show.
Mangas Gaming, which controls Everest
Gaming and owns Betclic, Expekt and BetAt-Home, has also announced their intentions to get French licenses as well. Ever-
71
The proposed tax rate for sports betting is
5.7 percent. The proposed tax rate for online poker is 1.8 percent. The tricky thing
about these tax rates is they’re designed
almost like sales taxes, and apply to each
euro bet, rather than gross revenue. So in
addition to charging a rake, online poker
rooms will have to figure out how to add the
1.8 percent “sales tax” into the mix as well.
As a point of comparison, online poker
companies licensed in Malta have to pay
a 5 percent tax on net income. And online
sportsbooks pay 0.5 percent tax on the
gross amount of bets accepted.
In addition to tax rates, online gaming
companies face additional hurdles if they
intend to operate in France. For online
poker, the pool for players is restricted
to France. And online gaming services
can only be offered to French residents
through sites using .fr domains.
est Poker and Betclic poker will create the
player pool for its French network.
company is based – describes the situation this way:
Mangas Gaming has also signed a fouryear deal with Métropole Télévision M6
to form an online gaming partnership.
Mangas will sponsor sports and poker
programs, and in return they’ll be offering Internet gaming on M6 Web sites. M6
is the second-most watched private television service in France.
“The problem with the French bill is that
it is laden with rules and regulations that
in reality make things extremely difficult
for foreign competitors to enter the market successfully. High taxes, limitations
on the products one can offer plus strict
rules on a company’s setup and operations
are in essence barriers to entry that will in
many cases prove too steep for competitors to even attempt to surmount.
The common thread among all of these
planned entries to the French market is
large operators. Large operators with deep
pockets are poised to take advantage of
France’s new law. And that’s because it appears that the regulations will make it difficult for smaller players to succeed there.
Ari Last, who works at right2bet – an
organization dedicated to allowing EU
citizens to be able to bet with whichever
EU-licensed betting company they wish,
regardless of in which member state that
“What this means is that the position of
the FDJ is strengthened, since on one
hand the new legislation entitles them to
advertise more and offer more services,
while at the same time it dissuades the
competition from posing a challenge.
And the Pièce de Résistance? The change
appears under an umbrella of ‘legislative
progression’ which the French hope will
get the likes of us, and the Commission,
off their back.”
As of press time, France’s new online
gambling regulatory body Autorité de
Régulation des Jeux En Ligne (ARJEL)
had not announced detailed technical
requirements for the online poker rooms
and sportsbooks getting ready to enter
the French market. The group did indicate that it expected to announce those
requirements in mid-May.
ENGLAND
When the Gambling Act of 2005 was
passed, and when its regulations on Internet gaming went into effect in 2007, it
was hailed as “the regulatory model” for
Internet gambling. It created the framework for a regulated online gambling industry in the U.K. But it still gave online
gambling sites licensed outside Britain
an avenue to access its markets through
a combination automatically honoring
the licenses of EU nations, along with
Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Gibraltar, and of “white listing” other jurisdictions for meeting British regulatory standards. (Only four jurisdictions
have been “white listed” – Antigua and
Barbuda, the Isle of Man, Alderney and
Tasmania.)
France and the U.K take a second look at their gambling laws
72
The online gambling industry loves the
current British regulatory model. But the
British government has become unhappy
with it, and is looking to make changes.
In April of 2009, Minister of Sport Gerry
Sutcliffe asked the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to assess
the performance of remote gambling
regulations and suggest changes. The underpinnings of the government’s unhappiness were clearly outlined in a DCMS
consultation report released in March
and included:
− Lack of consumer protections.
− Increase in complaints from
British bettors.
− No requirement for overseas jurisdictions to report suspicious
betting patterns.
− Other EU nations (e.g., France,
Italy) rejecting a single market
approach and adopting a national licensing system.
− Most casinos accessed by British
consumers were not licensed in
the U.K.
− Many operators who were
licensed in Britain have moved
overseas.
− Fear that emerging European
jurisdictions will be lightly
regulated.
− The inability to collect fees from
offshore gambling sites for the
British horse racing industry.
The lack of consumer protections
appeared to be the biggest concern
for legislators and DCMS.
where complaints have not been satisfactorily dealt with). However, as the Commission does not regulate these operators, they can only refer enquirers to the
regulator in the originating jurisdiction
and cannot investigate the complaints or
follow up to determine whether the issues
go on to be resolved.
“These enquiries give us a general indicator of the common problems that exist for
British consumers and indicate that some
people are unaware that they are gambling on an overseas licensed website and
are not protected by British law.”
ated from remote betting operations and
the remaining £40 million GGY from casino, bingo and other gambling products.
“In addition to adhering to British regulatory requirements and contributing to research, education and treatment of problem gambling in the U.K., U.K.-based
operators also pay tax on their betting and
gaming revenue. Licensed remote betting
operators are also required to contribute
10 percent of their gross profits towards
supporting the British Horseracing Industry via the Horserace Betting Levy.”
“The problem with the
French bill is that it is
laden with rules and
regulations that in reality
make things extremely
difficult for foreign
competitors to enter the
market successfully.”
“The Commission does not, of course,
have a monopoly on good regulation
– most, if not all, sites targeting British
consumers will be subject to some form
of regulation in their home jurisdiction
– there are different regulatory standards
and approaches,” the report reads. “Consumers therefore may experience varying levels of protection depending upon
which operator they deal with.
“The Commission receives many enquiries from British consumers about gambling activity licensed offshore. There
have been enquiries in relation to social
responsibility (for example, where consumers have been unable to self exclude
from websites) and unfairness (for example, where winnings are not paid out or
– Ari Last, Right2Bet
The second driving force behind the push
for changes is the sheer lack of operators
who choose to be licensed in Great Britain, and the revenue lost because operators are staying away.
“It is estimated that there are currently
between 2000-2500 gambling websites
worldwide,” the report reads. “The Commission currently has approximately 150
remote licensees that can offer internet
betting, casino or bingo. Of these, fewer
than 100 are active, consisting of some
large betting operators but mainly small
betting operators. The Commission’s
industry statistics paper for 2008 gives
the remote sector’s gross gambling yield
(GGY) at approximately £890 million
with approximately £850 million gener-
France and the U.K take a second look at their gambling laws
The DCMS solution to these problems is to “introduce the need to
obtain a licence to transact with
British consumers and advertise in
the U.K.”
“This is the Government’s preferred option,” the report reads.
“Under this option we would need
to amend the Act and introduce
a requirement for operators licensed in EEA member states and
Gibraltar to obtain a licence from
the Commission to permit them
to transact with British consumers and/or advertise in the U.K.
This would therefore apply to all
operators who want to operate in
the British market, irrespective
of whether they want to advertise
their services or not.
“Operators would be required to
demonstrate their ability to meet
and adhere to the provisions of the
Act, its secondary legislation and
the Commission’s requirements
in order to be permitted to transact with
and/or advertise to British consumers.”
DCMS also wants to develop a more
streamlined white listing process for jurisdictions outside the European Economic Area. But online gaming properties licensed in a white listed jurisdiction
would still have to receive a British license
to accept British players.
At press time, the results of the general
elections in the U.K. were not known. But
the Tories have been unhappy with the
Gambling Act for some time. And with a
new regulatory scheme being pushed by
the Labor Party, it’s likely that new online
gambling regulations similar to what’s in
the consultation paper are on the way.